


time slipping through my fingers

by thesilverwitch



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Historical, M/M, Multiverse, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-23 21:16:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2556014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverwitch/pseuds/thesilverwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was just another day.</p><p>That’s all Sami remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

>   
>    
> 
> 
> This amazing drawing was made by dearest friend [Fabi](https://twitter.com/shiiruba) drew for this fic! It is absolutely amazing and the fact that I would inspire such a thing is mind bogglingly awesome.

Afterwards, the thing he remembers most vividly is the sunlight.

The last dying strands of a setting sun. The entire sky lit in flames of scalding red and burnt orange. In different days, people would call it a bloody sunset, proclaim a life had been cut short in a spill of blood so immense that it washed the streets and the clouds in scarlet

Sami thought of it as a sign that summer was ending, and nothing else.

He remembers lying by the poolside, one arm in the water, the other resting on his chest. Despite the late hour, the air was still sweltering hot, with the world seemingly trapped in a claustrophobic cloud of heat and silence. Everyone was either home avoiding the warmth or outside like Sami, resting by their pools. The hours passed quietly, indistinctly. It was just another day before the football season began. Sami had spent the past few days cleaning his house and not thinking about whether or not he should change clubs. 

It was just another day. 

That’s all Sami remembers. 

* * *

He wakes up outside.

He thinks, for two disorientating seconds, that he fell asleep by the pool and that he’s probably pissed his pants if his hand spent all night in the water.

Then he notices how cold it is, unusual for Madrid in this time of the year, and then, finally, he opens his eyes.

Trees. That’s all he sees. They are above him, extending into the air as far as his eyes can see. Their branches are so high that he has to squint if he wishes to see them, their leaves a wall that stops all, but a few stray rays of light from pouring down. The forest continues around him in every direction. It’s so dense that he can’t see anything except for wave after wave of dark brown trunks covered in mossy green. Sami looks down, scared that he’ll see more trees beneath him for an irrational second.

The breath he lets out in relief when he sees solid, trusty old dirt and grass is short lived, quickly replaced by a growing sense of fear.

He sits up, takes another look around him and pinches himself. His vision doesn’t shift. The world doesn’t dissolve from a dream into harsh reality. He’s still in middle of some woods and there is not a single sign of human life anywhere. He opens his mouth to shout, “Hello!” before he remembers he doesn’t know where he is and how he got there. Making himself known might not be the smartest idea. Although, at the same time, the odds of whoever hears him being the same person who took him seem pretty high.

The ground beneath him is cold, almost wet, which he discovers when he gathers up the strength to stand up and press his feet firmly on the grass. Sami looks down, sees that he’s still in his clothes from yesterday, a faded grey shirt and red swim shorts. His shoes are nowhere in sight. A quick check through his pockets reveals all he’s carrying to be a packet of gum and a receipt for said packet of gum.

There is a mark shaped like a perfect circle, about the size of a two euro coin, on the inside of both his elbows. The marks are symmetric to each other and a muted purple colour that barely stands out against his dark sign. Sami presses his index finger against both, but they elicit no pain or any other strange feeling. Other than those, there are no marks on his body.

Sami looks up. He rubs his hands over his face and pinches himself again for good measure. He starts walking without any direction in mind.

At first, he’s constantly looking down, trying to avoid any rocks or branches in his way. This does nothing to stop the sting of every step and the ragged edges of everything he fails to avoid from digging into his skin. The pain is a distraction, but soon his thoughts cloud it and push it away.

If this is a prank, Sami thinks, it’s a really shitty one at that. Sami spends a lot of his time imagining that at any moment his teammates are going to jump out from behind a tree and shout, “Gotcha!” and then they’ll all go home and have a laugh about it.

This train of hopeful thinking lasts until he cuts his foot on a rock and has to rip his t-shirt for some fabric to wrap around the wound. The blood seeps through the fabric, a terrifying red stain that he has to press against uncomfortably until it dries.

Sami realises pretty early on that he’s not in Madrid, but he only accepts it after he cuts himself. Madrid—like most of Spain—is similar to a desert. The natural vegetation is thin and sparse, often consisting of bushes close to the ground and small trees. There are no forests so vast and so purely green. This looks like something straight from a fairy tale, unlike anything Sami has ever seen before. Even the air is different; fresher, colder. 

Sami walks, and he walks, and he walks. There are no paths he can take, so he doesn’t know where he’s going or how much he’s travelled. For all he knows, he’s walking in circles. He keeps walking.

Even though the trees cover it for the most part, Sami can still tell when the sun starts to set. The few rays of light grow weaker and weaker until they come close to extinguishing. Sami is no closer to finding out what happened to him by the time night falls and he’s surrounded by darkness.

Sami is not a person who is easily scared. He’s always scoffed during tours of haunted houses and laughed during horror movies, making fun of both the movies and people’s reactions to them.

Right now, Sami is terrified.

He doesn’t know what’s happening. Why him? Why this?

He goes to sleep huddled on himself, coiled tight in a foetal shape against the fat trunk of a tree that looks as old as the universe itself. No sounds lull him to sleep. There are no crickets or even a wisp of wind. No crawling animals or the faint sound of the sea. There is nothing, but the sound of his laboured breath and his heavy heartbeat.

Up above, in the trees, there is a small crack in the leaves that gives Sami a view of the infinite sky. It’s packed with stars, so many that it’s a wonder how they can all fit in such a small frame of space. If this were any other time, Sami would appreciate the beauty of such a sight.

There is one star that catches Sami’s attention. It’s tiny, so very tiny, and this ever so pale shade of blue. It would go completely unnoticed if it weren’t for how, every so often, it flickers. It’s a blink and you miss type of thing, almost as if it’s saying ‘hello’. Sami falls asleep while staring at it.

It’s as if the rest of the world has disappeared.

* * *

 “Move! Move! Somebody go wake up that hobo, I need to get the truck in the alley,” someone shouts.

The words barely register in Sami’s still sleep-addled brain. It takes two pairs of rough hands gripping his shoulders and sliding against the fabric to pull him up to get his eyes shoot open. Sami’s survival instinct kicks in before everything else does, and it gets him to fight back against the men holding him. He knees one man in the stomach and moves away from the other. The men let him go without resistance, eyeing him warily.

“Get out of here. This is no place for you,” one of the men says. He’s old, pushing fifty. Light-skinned, but this isn’t easy to tell underneath the layer of grit covering him. His clothes are fraying at the edges, but they’re well-kept. The other man looks similar to him. Old, tired and proud.

Sami takes two shaky steps back, until he hits the front of a gigantic truck whose horn shakes the ground when it makes itself heard.

“Where am I?” Sami asks. The men stare at him in confusion. They look like they didn’t understand a word of what he said. 

The man from the truck puts his head out the window and shouts at him. “We don’t speak foreign, lad. Now get a move on! We need to get the truck inside the alley and you’re blocking the bloody path.”

Sami nods, twice, shakes his head and finally moves out the way. He leans against a brick wall next to a dumpster to let the truck pass. He stares at the ground. It’s covered in tar, so black and gritty it absorbs the light. Sami’s bare feet stick to it.

“Where am I?” Sami repeats, this time in English. He has to pronounce each word slowly, not because of lack of fluency, but because his brain seems to be short-circuiting right now.

“Alley up St. Albans Road, next to Mary’s Bakery,” one of the men says as he starts unloading boxes from the truck and into the small door that’s opened to their left.

Sami nods, again, even though the words make no sense to him. He thinks about asking for more information, but now that he’s no longer blocking their path and consequently their ability to do their work, none of the men seem to care about him. Sami takes one last look at them before he walks towards the beginning of the alley, where he can hear people talking, cars moving and taxi cabs honking. A man shouting at his phone and a woman trying to console her crying child. The sounds of a city brimming with life.

If Sami had any doubts the day before, he doesn’t have them now. Something is happening to him and he still doesn’t know what, but he does know ‘aliens did it’ is no longer a crazy explanation why.

When Sami looks up, he sees a dull grey colour reflected in all of the sky, the buildings around him no taller than three stories high at most. There are black cabs lining the streets and smoke clouds clogging the air. Sami strokes his bare arms. A shiver runs down his spine.

He’s on St. Albans Road, next to Mary’s Bakery. Sami looks to the right and yup, there it is. Mary’s Bakery, with its neon ‘OPEN’ sign, its tinted windows and its busy customers. A man bumps into Sami as he moves towards the street to catch a cab. He doesn’t apologise or wait when Sami says, “Excuse me, you dropped something.”

Sami watches him leave before he kneels down and picks up the newspaper from the ground. He already knows what he’s going to see when he looks at the front page, but the title still makes him freeze on spot.

_The Daily Telegraph_ , it says in big, bold letters.

That’s not what’s most shocking, however. What really catches Sami’s eye is the date.

2nd of July, 1978.

Sami stares at the newspaper for a long time until another person bumps into him. This time Sami doesn’t say, “Excuse me,” and the man does linger behind, shooting him a poisonous glare before he continues walking. Sami watches his retreating form before he decides he needs to move somewhere quieter, somewhere he can think. 

A couple of people stare at him as he walks past them. One or two with pity, most with disgust. Sami knows what he looks like, with his shirt torn, barefooted and probably covered in dirt. He couldn’t bring himself to care even if someone gave him a Ballon D’Or for it.

He reaches Regent’s Park without noticing, his past visits to London guiding him subconsciously. There are two cops at the entrance that eye him warily as he walks past them, but they both stay silent. Sami ducks his head and looks down, avoiding eye contact.

He’s not sure how much time he spends at the park, sitting by himself on a bench hidden by some trees. He’s unaware of most things happening around him, like how his body is shaking from the cold and how is stomach has been growling at him for hours. He hasn’t eaten anything since Madrid. 

Sami brushes his hand through his air. He gets up and starts walking. He needs to get some clothes before he dies of hypothermia.

He doesn’t feel good about stealing, but there’s nothing else he can do. He has no money and no identification, not that neither would do him much good right now. Part of him thinks he’s still asleep, still being played in a prank, but for a prank this size, it’d have to be God himself arranging it, and Sami knows Allah wouldn’t be so cruel.

London is a mix of greys and blacks. The streets are frigid and unforgiving, ashened with all the smoke and dirt in the world. If you breathe in too deep, your lungs soon start rattling in protest. The food Sami manages to steal from a vendor’s market is stale and dry, but he’s hungry enough that this doesn’t bother him.

He spends the night with the homeless population, in an alley similar to the one he woke up in. Sami thinks about talking to the people there, see if anyone knows about stories similar to his, but he doubts his accent, a curious mix of Arabic, Spanish and German, would be well received in these parts. Not to mention that no one would listen to his crazy story. Sami is not sure if he believes it himself.

Sami picks a corner near a dumpster to spend the night. Some people are running a fire not too far away from him, but the chill of the night still starts to settle in his bones.

Nobody spares him a second glance.

Sami wonders what will happen to him the next morning. If he’ll wake up in the same place, back in the forest or back in Madrid. He wonders if he’ll even make it through the night. He falls asleep without any answers.

* * *

 Morning finds him in the same grimy spot. Sami spends the day in a library. The people at the reception desk check on him every five minutes, probably to make sure he isn’t about to steal or destroy anything. Other than that, they leave him alone.

Sami reads up on everything he can about time travelling, but all he finds are one or two theories that don’t fit his situation and lots of nothing. He spends most of the day reading sci-fi books, because outside it’s raining and bitter cold and he’s too tired to go out, too tired to do anything.

He falls asleep in a dusty, library chair. When he wakes up, he’s at a beach near the foaming sea. The sky is still gray, but the sand is a pearly color.

A gray-haired fisherman with a toothless smile wakes him up by poking him with a stick. He speaks to Sami in what Sami thinks is Chinese, but might also be any other Asian language. He takes Sami to his house and through lots of hand gestures and drawings on the dirt, the man asks Sami to help him chop the logs he has in his backyard and fix the man’s roof in exchange for food and place to sleep.

Sami isn’t sure what to do. He thinks maybe there’s something the universe wants him to do and that’s the reason why all this is happening, that if he fixes whatever is wrong he’ll go back to his home. At the same time, however, he’s not self-centered enough to think the universe would want him to do something so badly that they’d go through all this for him.

In summary, Sami has no clue what he’s meant to be doing.

He knows he could use this limited time and energy finding out more information about what is happening and where he is. The problem with this idea is that he doesn’t know how to do any of that either. He doesn’t know what questions he should be asking, much less if there are even any answers to them.

After some minutes of considering, Sami chooses to help the man with his house. It might not be what the universe wants him to do, but it’s better than nothing.

He learns the name of all the people living in the nearby village, how to make a fishing pole with just some wire and a stick and, more importantly, how to fish. He turns over the earth on the man’s garden for him. He learns how to skin a fish.

He stays for five days, until one night he goes to sleep and wakes up the next morning on the other side of the globe.

* * *

 And then it keeps happening.

Again, and again, and again, and again, and again. A thousand times over.

Through his own eyes, Sami sees the collapse of empires and the birth of nations. He hears the cries of war and the beauty of an untouched tropical treasure. Sometimes he only stays a day, others two or three. He stays over a week a bunch of times, but rarely ever over a month. He wakes up in the middle of bustling cities, decaying villages, harsh deserts and newfound islands. He nearly dies a couple of times.

He sees the world grow old from the perspective of a thousand different people. He sees the past and the future. He nearly forgets the meaning of ‘present’.

* * *

 He learns early on that he’s not jumping just through time and space like he thinks he is.

He is, somehow, jumping through worlds, dimensions, universes, whatever you want to call it. They’re all similar enough to each other that for the most part, he can’t even tell the differences between them.

‘For the most part’ is the key expression.

There is no scientific explanation Sami can think of to explain this. Then again, there is no scientific explanation he can think of to explain jumping through time and space either, so the point is moot.

He discovers it through one of his jumps, when he, by chance, wakes up in Germany in 2010.

Sami doesn’t even know how he’s going to explain the existence of two Sami Khedira’s to the world, but he doesn’t care. He asks the owners of a coffee shop if he can use their phone, and despite his ragged appearance and wild eyes, they hand him the telephone and tell him he can use the back room if he’d like.

Sami calls his parents’ home. A robotic voice on the other end of the line tells him the number is disconnected.

The owners of the coffee shop, a sweet old couple with soft smiles and softer eyes, allow Sami to use their laptop as well after he tells him the phone isn’t working. This is how Sami discovers there’s no Sami Khedira where he is. That this time and place is Germany, but it’s not _his_ Germany.

In this universe, when Germany won the U-21 championship in 2009, Sami was nowhere to be found in any of the pictures or articles. There are other people missing as well, another two or three teammates. In contrast, there are other players he’s never seen on the squad, people he’s never even heard of. If Sami were to call any of his teammates right now, they wouldn’t know him, much less recognise his name.

There is no Khedira family either, for that matter. It’s not as if something happened to any them. They simply don’t seem exist anywhere. There’s not a trace of information about his uncles, his cousins or his brother, not one photograph or one story. The yellow pages don’t list their family name.

There is nothing.

When Sami wakes up the next morning, by a lake somewhere in the heart of Africa, in a time where Europe has not left its irregular confines yet, he is relieved.

He’d dreamt about coming home night after night, but that time and place was not his home. That was not where he came from.

He stops dreaming about returning home after that.

* * *

Madrid and Germany are replaced in his mind.

Sami tries to keep the memories, keep home in his heart where it belongs, but the world is too wide and time is too old. Soon he’s got thousands of other memories begging for a place in his mind.

On most days he still wakes up wishing he was back home, back with his family, with his friends, with his teammates, but sometimes he’ll wake up on top of a low mountain somewhere in China, where the people are friendly even though they probably shouldn’t. The sun will be about to rise on the horizon and Sami will have a perfect view of the yellow light flooding the blue skies, and things aren’t suddenly all right again, but for a second, they don’t look so bad anymore.

* * *

There is a pattern to Sami’s jumps.

It takes Sami thirty-seven different times and places to finally notice this.

* * *

 The pattern goes by the name Mesut and has wide eyes, big ears and a blinding smile.

* * *

 Sami can’t explain it. This doesn’t bother him.

In fact, it’d probably bother him if he _could_ explain it, because it would mean there was one thing he could explain and ninety-nine others he couldn’t. He knows he’d go crazy if that were to happen. That he’d spend every minute of every hour trying to find the other clues of the ineffable puzzle of what was happening to him.

As it is, he accepts this easily enough, with far less anguish than when he accepted that he was jumping through worlds. This, at least, he thinks of as a good thing.

They meet properly for the first time, which is to say the first time Sami notices him, during the California gold rush years. 

It’s still one of Sami’s earliest jumps, around mark ten. It’s early enough that part of Sami is still fixated on what’s happening. Why? Why him? How? The list of questions goes on, seemingly endlessly. The other part of Sami is focused on one basic, simple thing: surviving.

Sami’s used to waking up with people looming over his body and glaring at him, but that doesn’t stop the shot of fear that runs through his veins every time. 

“We’re not a hostel, boy. If you want somewhere to sleep, go do it somewhere else,” the woman standing over him says. She has a thick American accent, a bit southern or so Sami thinks. 

Sami gets up, gives her a curt nod that’s as much of a ‘thank you’ as a ‘fuck off’ and starts walking away. The lady stands at the front door of a shop, ‘Merchandise & Mercantil’ the sign reads, watching Sami with her hands on her hips. She has a stained apron tied to her back and the wrinkles of someone who has seen enough to last them a lifetime. Sami keeps walking.

He takes in the town he’s in as he passes by each different building, digesting things slowly. The streets are covered in red and orange dirt, tarmac nonexistent. The buildings are all one or two-stories high, made from wood. There are two guys standing at the door of a bar called ‘The Lifeless Cub’ with swinging wooden doors wearing cowboy hats and carrying iron pickaxes. 

Sami stares for longer than he should, freezing before he remembers to continue walking.

He worries that people are going to stare at him. America and foreigners are never a good mix from what Sami’s read, but most people don’t spare him more than a glance. Everyone is busy, focused on themselves. There are wagons lining each side of the street, horses tied to the buildings as their owners abandon them for a quick stop at the cheapest bar.

A couple of people do look at Sami. Women and men alike size him up, but Sami figures they each do it for different reasons. He avoids all of their gazes anyway. It’s best to go unnoticed, to be a ghost; easy to miss, easy to avoid.

This isn’t an old, deserted town, similar to the ones Sami remembers from his childhood days reading Lucky Luke comic books. This is a place beginning to boom. There are roads in every direction and all of them have at least one or more buildings being built on their sidewalks.

Sami walks around for twenty minutes, searching for some clue of where he is, before he eventually gives up and asks a man dismounting his horse.

“Hey, can you tell me where we are?” Sami asks. He tries to disguise his accent as well as he can, thickening his voice so that he sounds like he has a bad case of a sore throat.

The man looks around, from left to right, then looks up at Sami like he’s daft. “We’re in front of Queensie’s Bar. It says so right there on the plate,” he points to the bar sign just two meters next to them.

“I meant, where we are as in the city. Also the date,” Sami adds, hoping the man will slip the year by chance.

“Sacramento. Twenty-first of March, 1850. You alright there, partner?” the man asks, raising a questioning eyebrow at Sami.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just…” disorientated, confused, with no clue where Sacramento is, thirsty and starving, “tired.”

“Aren’t we all?” the man grins at Sami, which makes Sami stare at him. The last time someone grinned at him like that he was still back in Madrid. “Come on, let me buy you a drink in exchange for a story.”

“I don’t have a story,” Sami says. He follows the man in to the bar, anyway. He’s not sure he trusts him, but nowadays Sami’s not sure he trusts anyone. Not to mention that he dry patch in his throat makes an excellent case on why he should accept a free drink. It’s not as if he has a lot to worry about. Other than the clothes on his body, which have seen better days, there’s nothing on him that can be stolen.

“You come to Sacramento and you don’t have a story? Now that’s something I find hard to believe. Everyone around these parts has a story.”

Sami doesn’t amend that he does have a story, just not one he can tell without sounding crazy. He still hasn’t found anyone he can trust with the truth. He never stays too long in the same place for that.

Sami looks the man over while he goes to the bar to get them their drinks. He’d noticed earlier that the man is taller than him, but he hadn’t been able to put it into perspective until now.  The man stands above everyone else waiting at the bar by a good ten centimeters at least. He’s also thin, thinner than is probably healthy, but he’s also got some muscles on him.

There’s a thin layer of dirt covering his clothes, but the man still wears them with a certain air of pride, filling every crook and curve nicely. Unlike his clothes, his skin is spotless. This makes him stand out comparing to everyone more than his height does, a feat in and of itself. Sami watches the man lean against the counter as he waits for their drinks. His hair is unruly, a mess of black curls, but his beard is sharp, carefully cut. He’s loosely holding a cowboy hat in one of his hands.

Every so often, he glances back at Sami and grins whenever he catches Sami’s eyes. He’s got a smug smile, Sami thinks. It’s in the way he does everything else as well. His walk, the way he stands. Everything about him seems to shout, _I know all the secrets in the world and I’m not sharing._

You’d think that this would make Sami fear him, at least distrust him, but he doesn’t look dangerous. He’s almost certainly up to something, but Sami is willing to find out what for that drink. It’s not as if he has anything better to do.

“I got us some Queensie’s only, delicious hot stew with spiced meat, which is just a fancy new name they found to call leftover meat in lukewarm water. It’s nice, though, and at least it’s not cold.”

Sami looks at the food the man has just put in front of him. He thinks everyone in the bar can hear the way is stomach is growling. “Thank you,” he says, “but I don’t have any money, I can’t—“

The man waves him off. “It’s fine, you look like you need it. Not to mention that you are terrible at hiding your accent, and we germans got to stick together, right?”

“You’re german?” Sami asks, doing a double take of the man. Sami will admit, he doesn’t look very american, but he doesn’t strike Sami as german either. Not to mention that unlike Sami, if he is german, he’s great at hiding his accent.

“Yes, but my family moved here when I was a babe and I never really picked up on the German. and now that I’m here where everyone’s accent is thick as rocks I’m starting to speak like they do, so that’s a joy,” Sami nods as the man speaks, even though he still has trouble as thinking of the man as a fellow german. The middle of the wild west seems like the last place he’d find a connection to home. “What about you? Did news about the gold reach Europe yet?”

One of the good things about being a famous, international football player for many years is that it has honed Sami’s ability to come up with lies to unexpected reporter questions in seconds.

“Not yet. I’ve been travelling for some time now and decided to stop here once I heard about the gold,” Sami says. He thinks he knows what the man is talking about now. The gold-rush years in America. This he did read about in his comic books.

“Smart thinking. You’ll need some equipment and you’ll have to travel a bit to find an unclaimed patch of land, but there’s still plenty of gold yet for picking. The lands are filled with it. It’s a golden age,” the man says, laughing at his own little joke. “I’m Hummels, by the way. Mats Hummels.”

“Sami Khedira.”

Mats looks Sami over, looking like he wants to comment on Sami’s name, but after a few second what he says is, “Tell me, Sami, you any good in a fight?”

Sami stares back at him. “Why? You planning on starting one?”

“No, but the three men in the table behind you have been staring at us ever since we sat down, and I don’t think they’re looking to make friends. Better eat that stew quick,” Mats says and then, true to his word, he picks up his stew, eats all the meat in four impressive bites and helps push it down with the beer, grimacing when he’s done.

Sami follows his steps and as he gulps down a beer that tastes as stale and disgusting as a rat’s ass, Sami thinks about how much he’s changed since this time travelling thing started. He wonders if it’s a good change or a bad one, but he doesn’t dwell on it for long.

Sami hears the sound of mugs being brought down heavily on the table behind him, chairs scraping on the floor. He tenses and tightens his grip on his mug. He wonders what will happen if he gets injured. He’s about to turn around, when somebody else walks up to their table and says, “Mats, where have you been? Me and Benni have been searching for you everywhere.”

Mats’ eyes widen at the sight of the newest addition to their convoy. He quickly gets up and starts to push the other man to the door. He says, “Shit, Mesut. Now is really not a good time for you to be here,” but it’s already too late.

Everyone at the bar saw him walk up to them, which makes him part of their group, which means at least they’re three against three now. Although, looking at the man in front of him, who is nothing but skin on bones, and the men behind them, who look like they’d fight a bear with their bare hands for a free meal, Sami’s not sure if this Mesut is going to be a help or a hindrance.

The guy doesn’t even get much of a choice of whether he wants to be in the fight, because at that exact second one of the men behind them picks up a chair and swings it in their direction, and then it’s punch or be punched.

Now, Sami is not a trained fighter. He’s a football player, an athlete. This, however, doesn’t mean he’s unaware of where to land a punch. The answer is pretty straight-forward most of the time; aim for the groin, the knees, the lower part of their stomach and the throat. Wind up your opponent, make them lose their breath and then, above everything else, keep punching until you make sure they’re down for the count.

Sami keeps an eye on his fighting partners all throughout the brawl. This is easier said than done. Too soon a bottle is thrown in the wrong direction, the wrong person is hit and out of nowhere another four are entering the fray. Sami spends more time ducking aimless punches than actually fighting. 

Mats seems to hold up his own well enough, if you are to take into account the way he smashes a chair against a guy’s head with no hesitation. Sami shifts his gaze as he knees a guy in the balls and dumps him on the floor. He searches for Mesut, who is tiny, who is probably getting his ass handed to him right now, and who Sami doesn’t know at all and thus shouldn’t care for, but who he can’t just leave to get beaten up because of him and Mats, never mind that Sami himself doesn’t have anything to do with this fight either.

Sami turns around, ready to go help the guy, and freezes when he sees that Mesut is not only holding himself up, he’s also doing it in a way that is as scary as it is impressive. He may not have a lot of strength, but he’s fast as lightning, slipping between the mass of bodies with ease. He’s also as resourceful as Mats, using objects to aid him instead of actually throwing his own punches. He knocks out a guy with a broken table leg and pushes another one into a burly guy by the corner, setting off another fight.

Sami doesn’t miss the way Mesut ducks down for a second to slip his hands into knocked out guy’s pockets, coming out with a golden watch that he pockets in the next second. Sami watches all this in silent appreciation. He’s about to turn around and focus on what’s happening behind him when he sees a man take out a knife from the inside of his pocket and start walking towards Mesut.

There is no need for Sami to think before he reacts. 

He jumps over a table, pushes two guys out the way and receives a nasty bruise on his jaw from a stray elbow, and still he keeps moving. He pulls Mesut out the way, pushing him behind his own body.

“Hey!” Mesut says. Sami ignores him, kicking the knife out of the man’s hand in a move straight out an action film that nobody in the room but him is able to appreciate.

“We need to get out of here,” Sami says. There’s not a single person in the bar not involved in the fight right now. Soon more knives are going to be taken out and they will wreck the whole place.

Sami doesn’t know about the others, but he doesn’t feel like getting stabbed today.

Mesut nods and grips Sami’s arm as he turns to yell, “Mats!” 

“Got it! I’ll go find Benni and our stuff, you take Sami,” Mats shouts from the other side of the room as he starts to sprint towards the exit.

Sami wants to complain about people talking about him like he’s not there, but there are smoke clouds coming from behind the bar counter and there are some things in life that just don’t need to be argued. He follows Mesut outside and then down a sinuous alley between the bar and the shop next door. They jump over a fence and take off running in the direction of the town’s outskirts.

They run until they reach the edge of a sparse set of trees, which Mesut guides them into, only then slowing down.

“So, why did Mats approach you?” Mesut asks after five minutes of walking, so bluntly that he makes Sami stare for a second. Mesut laughs, adding, “Mats does that a lot. Just goes up to people he finds interesting and start a conversation. That’s how he met me and Benni.”

Sami nods. “So this isn’t all just some kind of con to steal all my money? Because I meant it when I said I didn’t have any,” he says, half joking, half watching Mesut’s reaction.

“Don’t worry, we don’t usually steal and when we do, it’s only from people who aren’t going to miss a few lost items,” Mesut winks at Sami, grinning devilishly as he takes out the golden watch from his right pocket and twirls it in the air. If it’s legitimate, Sami can’t even imagine how much it’s worth in this time and place.

“How do you know that man isn’t going to miss _that_?” Sami asks. He knows it’s not a good idea to possibly annoy the thief currently guiding him through some woods with nobody else around, but the question slips out before he can stop it.

For his part, Mesut doesn’t seem bothered. “That man was the Samuel Brannan. He’s made a fortune selling mining equipment to all the fools rushing in for the gold with nothing on them. I can guarantee you, someone like him isn’t going to miss this watch. He probably has enough gold at home to make ten more like it.”

“Alright,” Sami says, because what else can he say? He knows what Mesut is saying is true, that if somebody had stolen a watch from him back in Madrid he’d have never have noticed.

“By the way, you didn’t answer my question,” Mesut says, grinning at him.

Sami sticks his hands in his pockets and ducks his head. “He said he recognised my german accent and said we germans got to stick together.

“ _You’re german_?” Mesut asks in Sami’s native language, stopping to look Sami over again with his wide eyes.

“Yes, and I take it that so are you,” Sami replies, staring back with the same kind of wonder and savouring every word.

He’s missed talking in german. He’s gotten more chances to use his mother tongue ever since the jumps started, but he still revels in it every time he gets to utter the words he knows so well. Words that he can breathe out with ease. Words that he doesn’t need to examine for five minutes before he utters them.

“Lived there most of my life, moved here five years ago. I met Mats just off the ship in New York. He was the one who taught me how to speak in English and get rid of the accent,” Mesut says, smiling at the end like he’s remembering an old joke.

“And the other guy? Benni?”

“German as well. We met him on the road here before this last winter. He and Mats hit it off pretty well, you could say, and he’s been with us since,” Mesut looks Sami over, “And I guess you’re part of the group now, too. Another german for the team.”

Sami freezes, stares back at Mesut in mild panic. “I— I mean—“

“Oh. _Oh_. I’m sorry. I mean, I assumed? That you’d be trying to find somewhere to stay nearby, and we already have a camp site and our own claim, and Mats seemed to like you and just. Sorry. I’m shutting up now,” Mesut says as colour starts towards his cheeks. Sami stares at him. He’s trying to figure out something to say when Mesut says, “We’re here. Benni and Mats should be meeting us in a while. We had to go into town to buy food and some mining supplies, so I don’t know how long it will take them to bring everything back.”

Sami nods in reply, but Mesut is already walking ahead of him.

At the camp, Mesut starts fussing about with everything, throwing some things away and cleaning others. They’ve got two tents set up, both just big one to cover one grown man, two if they sleep glued to one another. Mesut enters and leaves one of them at will, while leaving the other alone. Sami figures Benni and Mats are sharing the other.

The silence between them isn’t exactly uncomfortable, but it’s not comfortable either. Sami can tell Mesut is only keeping busy so they don’t have to talk and it makes Sami wish he had something to say. He can’t promise that he’ll stay, because it’s a promise he can’t keep, and he can’t explain why, because he knows they wouldn’t believe him.

It doesn’t even occur to Sami that maybe he shouldn’t say or trust these men. That maybe he shouldn’t be looking into ways to say, _I’m sorry, I’ll try my best to stay_.

Mats and Benni show up as the sun starts to set. Mats is grinning from ear to ear, while Benni is glaring at the back of his head the whole time as they dump their things on the floor, although he does grin when he sees Sami.

“Hello, you must be the newest addition to our german group in the wild west,” he says, offering his hand for Sami to shake.

Out the corner of his eye, Sami catches Mesut moving his hand in a horizontal line in front of his throat. Even though he knows he shouldn’t, Sami still says, “I guess I am.”

They talk all throughout dinner, which is hot stew with vegetables because, “Mats dropped the chicken while we were getting away and that was all the meat we were able to afford.”

After telling him this, Benni returns to his earlier state of glaring at Mats, who winks back at the attention.

Mats and Benni ask Sami about himself while Mesut stays mostly silent. Sami tries to stick to the truth. He doesn’t feel good about lying to these people, not like this. He tells them about living in Spain and travelling europe, trying to stick to all the facts he remembers from history class in school and past jumps. He’s lucky that none of them know enough about the rest of europe to question the authenticity of his story.

By the end of dinner, Mats and Benni seem to have lost track of the conversation. They keep glancing at each other, only to look down at their plate whenever the other catches their eye. Sami thinks it isn’t a stretch to say there’s something going on there, although if he had any money he’d bet they both think they’re being real subtle about it.

If he’s honest, he’s a little surprised. The last place he expected to find a gay couple was in the eighteen fifties in america. Then again, he’s seen far more shocking things in his lifetime.

Mesut is probably thinking the same thing about subtlety as him, because he keeps looking at him, as if he expects Sami to start loudly voicing his complaints any second now. Sami smiles and tell him through his eyes that it’s fine, he doesn’t care, he’s seen far worse PDA in the locker rooms. Eventually, Mesut relaxes, his shoulders slumping. He smiles back at Sami.

Sami’s not sure what he expected to happen after dinner, but it sure wasn’t Benni handing him a blanket and saying, “It probably won’t get cold in the tent, but just in case you need it.”

Sami stares. He doesn’t need to ask ‘what tent?’, but he’s not sure how far this unspoken agreement stretches, if Mesut even wants to share with him.

Mesut saves him the trouble of trying to figure it out. “Leave your shoes outside beneath the rucksack. You don’t want any animals getting them.”

Sami does as he’s told.

The space inside the tent is set at microscopic proportions. Sami sets the blanket where his head will be. He doubts he’ll have cold tonight.

Sami’s sure they’re going to sleep back to back, but Mesut turns on his side so that he’s facing Sami. “Sorry,” he says, “but we’ll fit better like this.”

Sami doesn’t know what drives him to do it. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s sleeping inside for the first time since Madrid. The first time he’s actually made what he’d roughly consider friends. The first time he’s felt at ease. He doesn’t know if there’s even a reason besides the simple ‘I want to’, but he does it anyway. He tangles his feet with Mesut’s as he says, “It’s alright.”

Despite being surrounded by almost complete darkness, Sami thinks he still sees Mesut swallow, the long movement of his shallow throat.

“We’re thinking of moving out soon,” Mesut tells him once they’re both settled. His voice is a low rasp, loud in the confinements of the tent. “There’s still a lot of land that’s yet to be searched for gold, but it’s all up the river. If you want, you can come with us. It’s fine if you don’t, though. Your choice.”

For the second time that night, Sami does what he shouldn’t and says, “I’d like that.”

When Sami wakes up the next morning, a thousand miles to the south and twenty years in the future, it’s the first time he wishes the jump hadn’t come.

* * *

 Sami isn’t capable of keeping track of all the jumps. He tries at first, but he soon loses count.

The times he meets Mesut, however, those he makes sure to remember.


	2. Chapter 2

The second time they meet is during Sami’s twenty-eighth jump. So far he’s been able to keep track of the jumps through his memory, but he knows soon he will lose track of the number and will no longer be able to tell one time and place from another, no matter how different they may be.

When Sami was younger, his dad insisted he learnt Arabic and divided his teenage years between football and educating himself about his roots, be it by reading poetry from the old masters or catching up on Tunisian history.

Sami had hated it at the time. He didn’t mind learning Arabic, it felt like something he should do regardless of what his father wanted, but he found the poetry impossible to read and the history lessons to drag on and on, seemingly with no end in sight. It didn’t help that his dad wasn’t a very captivating teacher.

Now, however, he’s eternally grateful that his dad taught him more than school ever did, or he probably wouldn’t be able to tell the people holding spears to his head not to kill him. He knows the words are rough on his tongue, and that that combined with his accent makes him sound even more questionable. Nevertheless, he knows the right words to say and that seems to be enough to lift the spears.

Sami doesn’t dare ask what he did wrong. He’d woken up backed against a tall wall with two men already standing above him and two others running in their direction. The men quickly brought him to his feet and started leading him through the city. From the clothes they’re wearing, which are more ostentatious than regular soldier clothes, Sami would guess they’re private guards of some kind and that he’d been sleeping somewhere prohibited.

Go figure, of all the places to wake up, it was just his luck that he’d wake up somewhere against the law.

Sami spends the next twenty minutes absorbing everything he can about the city and the people around him, while getting his head shoved down every time he tries to look up. It’s a frustrating experience to say the least.

The name Kairouan is shouted across the streets a couple of times and eventually Sami connects the dots and remember why it rings a bell. Kairouan is the name of a city part of ancient Tunisia, often mentioned in the texts Sami used to read. It is a rich and thriving place, and from the looks of it, still growing, which makes this jump the farthest back in time Sami has ever been.

Sami figures if he can survive this one, he can survive just about anything.

The guards take him to a large palace, leading him through the back doors to a prison cell where they dump him with no further instructions. There’s a certain dirty, medieval aspect to the room, with its large wooden door barring the exit and the small windows near the ceiling the only source of light. The stone is a light shade of grey, originally white, but now dirty with all kinds of stains that Sami refuses to think about.

There are also rats, because of course there are rats, as if you could have a prison cell without them, alongside some other men sitting by the walls. Other criminals, Sami supposes. He doesn’t ask why they’ve been arrested. He’s not curious to find out.

A man shows up at one point, in clean-cut, teal robes that scream ‘important authority figure’. He looks Sami up and down and asks for his name, leaving afterwards without another word.

Eventually the guards from earlier return. They take Sami and the other prisoners to an audience with someone whose title Sami has trouble translating. He thinks it sounds something like a mix of ruler and prince.

Sami keeps his head down during the entire walk without being prompted, but when the guards finally bring him to his knees in front of a golden throne, he can’t help himself. He looks up.

He’s only aiming for a short glance, a small peek to see who’s about to determine how Sami spends the next day or two or three or who knows how many. He doesn’t mean to stare, it’s just that it’s impossible not to. 

The prince, save for a few exceptions, looks exactly like the man Sami shared a bed with in Sacramento, to the point where it’s downright bizarre.

The prince is older than Mesut was by at least ten years. He’s not a layer of skin attached to dry bones either, with a layer of fat and muscle now attached to him. His skin is clean, washed and without a mark to it. His robes are extravagantly decorated in bright, rich colors and he has all kinds of larger than life golden jewelry, from rings to earrings to necklaces. He also condemns Sami to three months work with a flick of his hand and that is that. 

Sami gets dragged up by the guards. He only stops staring when his head is pushed down and he’s taken out of the room. They take him back towards the path they took earlier, but this time keep walking after reaching the prison cell, guiding Sami across the city towards a building Sami recognizes from pictures.

The Great Mosque of Kairouan.

Sami always knew it was an impressive building, but he never expected the massive construction he sees in front of him now, so big it looks like it could change the course of the earth with its weight. The mosque’s outside looks pristine, solid, without a flaw to it, but the inside Sami discovers has been ripped apart and torn inside out for reconstruction work.

One of the guards puts a single metal shackle around his left ankle when they first get there. Sami silently curses the damn thing. It means he’ll have to find a way to get rid of it when he wakes up somewhere else.

They lead him to what some people would call rudimentary barracks, and what Sami calls some wooden poles covered in fabric backed against the wall furthest away. Sami only listens half-heartedly as another man, this one tiny and bald and not so well dressed, tells him what to do.

He’ll have to work. Lift, carry, pull and build. He’ll get two meals a day. He is not a slave, but a sentenced worker. Sami stares. He’s not quite sure why they bother with semantics.

Sami spends the rest of the day getting accustomed to having people shout at him in a language he’s only used to seeing in books. He knows most of the words, how to make sense of them, but still he stumbles. It means a couple of times people shout a little harder and get a little too close to threatening Sami with physical violence.

Lucky for him, he’s a fast learner.

He doesn’t think about the prince again until the end of the day. He chalks up the man’s appearance to a mix coincidence and Sami’s brain messing up. He’s too tired to think any further, too beaten up to examine what’s probably just funky genetics at work.

The second time they meet, it’s after a long day of work and Sami doesn’t spare him more than a quick glance. He’s heard from the other workers that his name is Mesut, which made him stop the first time he heard them say it. What are the the odds of him meeting two Mesuts that look so similar, in such different times and places? Logic tells him none, but logic isn’t worth much to Sami anymore.

It’s only the third time they meet that Sami realizes it’s him. 

They’re in the mosque, obviously, as Sami is not allowed out on penalty of death. The moment he discovers this is marked with a pool of red on the marble courtyard. “If you are not here by choice,” the guards tell them, “then you do not get to leave here by choice.”

Sami still sees the blood whenever he closes his eyes during work.

He’s been in this place for four days and he’s expecting the jump to come at any time now. He hasn’t thought about Mesut since the last time he saw him, two days ago. He thinks about him now, when he’s face to face with him again, and finally realises that it’s him. That it can’t be anyone but him.

Before, he’d only seen the physical similarities, but now he can see the rest. He sees the way Mesut walks, confident and tall, and how it contrasts with the way he speaks, quieter and more paused. As ridiculous as it sounds, however, it’s his smile that stands out the most. It makes him look endearing, rather than the terrifying man capable of sentencing them all to death, and Sami knows that smile. He knows it.

Sami wants to run up to him and ask him if this is happening to him as well, if they are experiencing the same things. Only he can tell from the way that he inspects the work at the mosque that this Mesut has never known another life than this one, just like the Mesut he met in Sacramento was a born American.

Sami’s heard a lot about this Mesut through the other workers. The people don’t trust him. They question his background, say it’s not right that a man born from a Turkish mother on the borders of Egypt is the next in line to govern Kairouan. Some people, mostly the guards at the dead of night when they think no one can hear them, even dare to question his skill as their future ruler.

They say he’s too gentle, call him all kinds of name from ‘large eyes’ to ‘fragile flower’ to simply ‘outsider’. 

Seeing him walk around makes Sami realize this Mesut doesn’t walk with confidence and pride by choice. The reason he gives his words such pause is because he’s thinking them over carefully before uttering them. Everyone’s eyes are on him, waiting to see if he’ll mess up. Sami knows how this will happen. He’s seen it already in two other countries.

One mistake is all it takes. Small or big, it doesn’t matter. Just one mistake to get the rumour mill going. It starts with a flood of whispers that wash all the streets until they grow in size and number. The waves will grow taller and angrier, until one person slams down their first and says, “enough is enough,” and the fires start. That’s when you either run and maybe live, or stay behind and die.

Sami hopes this Mesut is smart and that he’ll choose to live. There’s no point in keeping your pride if it means losing everything else.

Sami slips. He’s been staring at Mesut ever since he entered the mosque’s courtyard while carrying the construction rocks from one wall to another. One second he’s walking, the next he’s in the air, about to fall to the ground, but not before the rock previously in his hands goes flying from them. It lands on top of a Mesut’s feet, crushing his toes. Of course it does.

A guard pulls Sami onto his knees by the hair on his head before Sami can even find his footing. He growls out, “To attack a guard would be serious enough of an offence, but to attack Prince Mesut…” the guard shakes his head, like he can’t believe it, and Sami already knows what’s going to come. 

Sami bites down on his lip and digs his nails into his palms with enough force to draw blood. He knows it will be worse if he struggles.

He doesn’t want to die. Not as a slave. Not in this time or place. Not like this.

He closes his eyes.

Not a single sound can be heard across the courtyard. Not a flutter of a bird’s wing. Not Sami’s frantic breathing. Not the raised heartbeat of the guard lifting a sword to his neck. There’s nothing, until there is.

“Stop!”

The hand holding his head is slapped away. Another hand, softer, pulls Sami up to his feet and moves him away from the guard. Sami opens his eyes. “You will not kill this man because of an accident.”

“But Prince Mesut--” the guard tries to say, staring incredulously at Mesut.

“And you will certainly not disobey me,” Mesut stares at the man in the eye, daring him to disrespect him again.

The guard looks down, swallowing before he says, “As you wish.”

“Tell the people to go back to work,” Mesut says. Sami tries to move away so he can get back to work alongside everyone else, but Mesut’s hand on his shoulder keeps him firmly in place. Sami clenches his fists. He’s already called enough attention to himself as it is. He should leave, he should--

“I need help getting back to the palace after that... unlucky throw.”

Sami stares at Mesut, wide-eyed and unsure. Mesut stares back as the right corner of his mouth lifts by a fraction of a centimeter. 

Sami takes Mesut by the elbow, letting him rest his weight on him. Mesut’s foot is beginning to turn a scary shade of dark red, but it doesn’t look swollen and Mesut seems to be able to step on it without it hurting much. Sami hopes nothing’s broken. 

“You shouldn’t be doing this,” Sami says, and then because he’s not sure what the proper form to address someone like Mesut is, he adds a, “my lord,” at the end and crosses his fingers that he’s close to the right form.

“What? Walk? I know I’m the governor of this city while my brother isn’t here, but even I think it’s a bit too much to ask you to carry me just because a rock fell on my foot. I’m not that fragile,” Mesut’s tone changes from light-hearted to charged with spite at the last part.

“No, I meant taking me away. I am grateful for your help, but the people...” Sami trails off. There’s no way for him to say the rest without sounding too presumptions, and Mesut has to know what the people have been saying about him and how this will be seen. He has to, because he just opened the city gates and welcomed the flood with open arms for Sami’s sake.

“I know, but if I left you there, I’m sure that guard and his fellow guardsmen would have their revenge by nightfall for the humiliation he suffered. You seem strong, but I doubt you’d be able to fight a couple of armed guardsmen and live to tell the tale,” Sami stares at Mesut. He knows what Mesut is saying is true, but that doesn’t actually make him feel any better. “I won’t apologize for saving your life, if that is what you’re after,” Mesut adds. They’ve reached the palace’s front gates, which open for them instantly. Mesut marches inside with no hesitation, forcing Sami to keep walking with him.

“You might have risked yours to do so,” Sami whispers, deciding to cut to the chase and go straight to the truth.

Mesut takes a look around. Sami lifts his eyes and sees what he’s looking at. Everyone at the palace stops to look at them as they walk. To say the look they give Mesut is unkind is an understatement.

“I might have added more wood to the fire, but I assure you, the first flames were already lit. These people don’t like me. They never have, and they never will.”

“What will you do?” Sami asks. They’re in a room alone now. Mesut’s chambers, Sami would guess if he had to. There’s a large doorway leading to a courtyard and the room is decorated with all manners of tapestries, paintings and colorful mats.

Mesut gives him a scrutinizing look, as if he’s trying to decide whether or not Sami’s worthy of hearing his explanation. He must see something that he likes, because in the end he shrugs and says, “I cannot leave. My brother left me in charge and I cannot abandon the city, not to mention there is nowhere I could go to if I left Kairouan.”

And suddenly Sami no longer sees the confident ruler he saw only moments before. He sees Mesut for who he is. A terrified man who thinks the cards are all in someone else’s hands.

“There is always a way,” Sami replies.

Mesut shakes his head. “Not for someone like me,” he says. Sami wants to argue further, but Mesut steps away and turns his back on him, walking to the other side of the room. “You can spend the night here. I’ll guide you out through one of the back passages in the morning while most of the palace workers are still asleep.”

“Thank you,” Sami says. It’s not what he wants to say at all.

Mesut returns to his side with a large brass key in his hand. “You’re welcome,” he whispers as he kneels down by Sami’s feet and removes the iron shackle around Sami’s ankle.

Mesut leaves shortly afterwards to deal with some ‘urgent matters’. Even though he knows the people won’t act so quickly, Sami still fears that he won’t return.

He does return, hours later and no worse for the wear. They dine together in silence. Sami wishes there was a way for him to change Mesut’s mind. He thinks he’ll find it tomorrow, if he’s still here by then. He can’t let things end like this.

Mesut’s room is large and full of draped silks and pillows. It’s easy for Sami to find a comfortable spot to lie in.

He wakes up in a jungle the next day.

* * *

The third time they meet is when Sami’s sure this isn’t just a coincidence.

The year is 2362 and the place is Berlin.

Sami’s been to the future a couple of times now and here’s what he can say about it: the similarities to the past are always more shocking than the differences. Sami figures this is because he already expected things to change, so seeing them do so is not surprising, whereas for them to stay the same seems nonsensical to him.

Most cars don’t need drivers anymore, but there’s still a steering wheel and pedals in all of them. The buildings are taller and thinner. There is a tree every two meters lining all the streets, so that the city is a mix of greys and green pops of color. Skies as deep as the ocean, as deep as the universe. There’s pollution control. Recycled air, water and dirt. Recycled everything. There is less advertising on the streets, but it’s flashier now. For the first time in a hundred years, you can see the stars at night in the city.

Not every city is like this. A lot of cities in Asia, Southern europe and South America have yet to develop proper air control. Sami discovered this the harsh way when he woke up in Hong Kong in 2282. The sun was constantly hidden behind the smog, night and day not so different from each other. The air was unbreathable, to the point where people used underground paths to travel and never went outside.

It had felt like the end of the world and Sami’s lungs had rattled for days afterwards.

Berlin is one of the clean cities. It’s easy to find a place to sleep and there are still public libraries around, which Sami visits whenever he can find them.

He always googles himself, but never finds anything. He wonders if it’s because something happened to him before his name was recorded, or if he just never existed in this universe. Or maybe he’s unique and there are just no other Sami Khediras out there. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t think he’ll ever find out.

He meets Mesut in an open clinic, after he cuts his foot again while walking through a park. The people there don’t ask too many questions, just get him in and take care of him. One of the nurses offers him a room to stay the night when Sami admits he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

Sami wonders if they have some way of finding his information, or if they simply don’t care.

Mesut is another patient. He’s placed in the same room as Sami for the night. He’s unconscious and Sami can’t resist checking the chart in front of his bed. It’s pretty small, with only the most important information. Sami assumes the rest is somewhere online.

Mesut Özil. Twenty-eight years old. Had brain surgery last month to remove a tumor near the brainstem. The removal was a success, but the patient hasn’t showed signs of waking up since. It’s possible that close connection between the tumor and the brainstem have affected the patient's condition. There are a couple of notes on possible treatment, but they’re mostly incomprehensible. On the last lines, there are just two words. _Call family._

Sami spends most of the night sitting on his own bed and staring at Mesut. It’s him. There’s no doubt about it. And Sami knows that this Mesut, like the two others, belongs in this world. That he somehow exists in the Ancient Kairouan, the American gold-rush years and twenty-second century Berlin.

Sami wonders if there’s anyone else like Mesut. Someone else scattered through history. If they do exist, he hasn’t met them yet and he doubts that he will.

There’s never been a pattern or an explanation, nothing that could be related to anyone else. 

There’s only now beginning to be this man.

* * *

If Sami had to say, he’d bet they’d already met before that time in Sacramento, passed each other on the street. Maybe Mesut was one of those people sneering at him in the cold streets of London. Maybe he was another one of the homeless men and women Sami shared body heat with so many times.

Other times, though, Sami knows he’s not there. Sometimes Mesut has already died. Others he mustn't even be born yet. Sami meets Mesut’s mother when she’s pregnant. He recognizes her through her ears and her smile. They’re the exact same as Mesut’s.

He helps her carry some shopping bags into her car and asks her about the baby. He’s curious, and if he admits it, a little starved for more information about this man he keeps meeting anywhere and everywhere. She says he kicks a lot, but mostly only when she’s walking around, and that she was hoping for a boy initially. 

Sami lets it slip that he likes Mesut as a name.

He wonders, afterwards, if that was the right choice. It doesn’t take him long to realize that he doesn’t care, either way.

* * *

The sixth time they meet Mesut is dying. Cancer. He’s reaching seventy years of age and he lives by himself in an old cottage near Einfelder See, in the north of Germany. The people in the village nearby tell Sami about him when he asks. Sami has to walk for four days to find him and every night he goes to sleep fearing that he’ll wake up in another place.

When he finally finds him, Sami discovers that Mesut is living with his granddaughter, Elena. She is the one who takes care of him and manages the house. 

She wakes up everyday before the break of dawn and heads out to the lake with two buckets to collect water. Afterwards she comes up, feeds the chickens, four bickering little things, an old cow named Missy and a horse that sniffs at Sami’s hand when he approaches him. Elena milks the cow, checks the chicken coops for eggs and then heads back inside, where she cooks breakfast with whatever they have available.

She says times are rough, but they make do. She takes the horse to the village every Tuesday and Thursday to clean the houses of two different families. The people in town know her, so they always give her a little extra or cut down the price on one thing or another.  

Her veins stand prominently against her skin. Her hair is a lifeless brown color and she already has more than a couple of white hairs. Her smile is wide and beautiful; she takes it after Mesut.

She says it’s not the best life one can lead, but it’s hers.

She tells Sami all this, because the day Sami reached their crumbling wooden home was one day too late. Mesut had passed away in the quiet hours of the previous night.

She tells him he used to sing to her when she was a child, every night before she went to bed. He took her and her two baby brothers in when her parents abandoned them on his doorstep and he never complained about it, never told them off. He worked two jobs to feed them and loved them unconditionally. His jokes were never funny, but he always found them hilarious. He cooked a wonderful plate of beans. He learnt how to read and write so he could teach her.

She tells him that he didn’t live a good life, but he lived a full one. And the way she says it-- it’s full of pride, Sami notices. This is the kind of person who is proud of everything they achieve, everything they own. Sami used to be like that. He’s learning how to be it again.

He nods and listens as she speaks, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what he could say to her, if there is even anything to say.

He helps her bury Mesut’s body, later, when the sun is beginning to set, because he can’t leave now. He can’t leave.

Past the wrinkles and washed out skin, past the sickly hollow of his cheeks and the whites of his hair, Sami recognizes Mesut the reckless miner. Mesut the ancient ruler. Mesut the sports reporter. There is no doubt that it’s him. His eyes are still just as enormous, his ears just as salient.

Sami doesn’t cry as they cover the body with dirt, but he comes close. He barely even knows Mesut in general, and he certainly doesn’t have a close connection to this Mesut specifically, yet he feels like he does. He feels like he’s known Mesut since the beginning of time, like they met at the dawn of the universe.

He tells Elena about meeting Mesut a long time ago and how he’d never been able to forget him. It’s not a lie.

He stays for two more days, helping around the house however he can. He tells Elena she should go into town and find a house there, that living by herself in the woods is a bad idea. She asks him to stay. He tells her he can’t and when she asks why, he feels tempted to tell her, to try to explain, but he knows she wouldn’t get it. It’s not the right time or place.

* * *

The seventh time they meet, Sami gives Mesut a bone-crushing hug. Mesut yells at him to let him go, but when Sami eventually does, he asks Sami if he’d like to drink a cup of coffee with him.

Sami thinks he’s curious about him, this stranger who just hugged the living daylights out of him for no apparent reason. Mesut pays for their coffees and asks Sami about him. Nearly everything Sami tells him is the truth. It always is. He talks about Germany and working in Madrid for the past couple of years. He lies about his job. He changes a couple of names and events so they don’t stand out too much, on the off-chance that Mesut might know the people he’s talking about from hearing about them on television. He talks about his family and how much he misses them.

Mesut asks him why can’t he go back. Sami says, “Some things just can’t be done.”

When they leave, Mesut asks him for his phone number, and Sami regrets not having one to give him. They agree to meet the next day at the same place, same time.

Sami is already gone by then.

* * *

Mesut is always there. His last name, his age and his background all change. In fact, everything seems to change except the most important things. He’s always named Mesut and his laugh is always heart-warming. He has a penchant for trouble and a heart too kind for his own good. His eyes and ears look too big for his head, but Sami loves this about him. He loves how Mesut always stands out to him.

He meets Mesut when Mesut is sixty-seven and travelling the world on a cruise ship, one last adventure. He meets Mesut when he's a red-faced child, still learning how to say the alphabet. 

He meets Mesut when Mesut is an astronaut about to leave the earth. Sami wants to ask him to stay, but he knows he has no right. This man doesn’t know him or owe anything to him. Still Sami can’t resist getting closer. He knows he’ll leave soon, but so will Mesut, so what’s the harm in giving in, just this once, and getting to know him?

He and Mesut fuck in the early hours of the morning the day before Mesut leaves and it’s mind-blowing, the kind of night that will stay branded on Sami’s mind forever no matter what happens. He wants to take his time, but he can’t, not when Mesut is spread out beneath him and this might be the only chance he’ll get to do this. So they fuck, quick and rough. It's too easy to give into the temptation of leaving marks behind, even if they're temporary.

Sami isn’t gone the next day and he’s forced to watch Mesut leave. He finally gets a glimpse of how much it must suck for Mesut when he’s the one to leave without warning.

He gives up trying to make sense of what is happening to him. There’s no point. Few are the times he has access to a library of any kind. Even fewer is the information he finds that looks the least bit credible.

He simply accepts that this is happening and that he can’t do anything about it.

Maybe it’s a dream, Sami thinks one day. Maybe it’s a dream and if I manage to wake up, I’ll wake go back to Madrid, back to my time. 

But he only has a couple of ideas of how he could wake himself up from his dream and none of them leave him with very good prospects if his theory turns out to be false, so in the end Sami doesn’t do anything about it.

Tonight he’s sleeping on the streets, which stopped being a new experience a long time ago. The cold doesn’t get to him anymore, neither does the harshness of the tarmac floor. He’s been in—where was it again? Some town in the heart of France, away from everything—for three days now and he’s yet to see Mesut.

He’s searched for him, of course. What else could he do? But he speaks little french and the people here are too busy fixing their lives to spare him their time and energy. The war ended only a year ago here, but it takes a long time to move on from something like that.

Sami’s thinking of searching for some work tomorrow if he still wakes up here, help however he can in exchange for food and clothes. His body is not like it was before this whole thing started, but he’s still strong and bigger than most. It’s his saving grace. He’s got no money, no documents, and often not even a name he can use, but he’s got a healthy body and two strong arms. He can work.

This time, though, he doesn’t get a chance to do anything. Morning finds him somewhere else, in the cold edges of a Russian forest near a city with a name Sami can’t even pronounce. He missed Mesut that time, which is not unusual, but it still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Sami always worries about how Mesut is doing. If he’s alive and well or sick and close to the end.

Sami always wonders if he’s meant to change anything, fix something, but he’s always gone before he can figure it out.

* * *

The eleventh time they meet, Mesut is a lifeguard on a beach on the south of Portugal frequented by rich families and couples. It’s the year 1981. 

Sami steals some clothes from a nearby home and spends two days chatting him up, because he can. Because this feels almost normal. Because he wants to, but mainly, because Mesut doesn’t brush him off.

No matter the world, the time or the place and often against all logic, Mesut never ignores him.


	3. Chapter 3

There are moments when Sami misses his family so much it’s as if there is a hole in his chest. This punched, black wound bleeding him dry, and it’s terrifying, how he feels so much, how all he can do is tuck his body as tight as possible and try to hold on.

The feeling goes away eventually. Sometimes it lasts for days, others only for a couple of hours. Sunlight usually helps. So does seeing Mesut, even if Sami never gets the chance to talk to him. Just having him close by is enough. A familiar face who Sami knows nothing about.

This is not, however, what Sami hates the most about the jumps.

What really gets to him is not being in control, not being able to choose his path. He hates that this is happening to him without his permission, he hates that he doesn’t know how to stay a little longer or jump faster. He hates that he’s used to waking up in new worlds as if it was a normal, average thing to do. 

He can try to stave off sleep, but eventually his body will force him to rest, and it will only be a matter of chance whether he wakes up in the same place or not. There’s no pattern Sami can distinguish, no answer to his questions.

Sometimes he fears he’ll forget what it’s like to have a home.

* * *

The worst jumps are the ones when he wakes up and he’s a second away from being killed. 

Animals are, curiously, not a big threat. Whenever he wakes up in a forest or a desert he’s alone, with just the ground and the sky to keep him company. Sami is not sure how the jumps work, if he suddenly shows up somewhere the second before he opens his eyes or if he sleeps there for most of the night. He figures that must have something to do with it.

Regardless, the point is animals aren’t a big concern. Humans, however, don’t get the same vote of trust.

Sami sometimes wakes up in the middle of a war. If he’s in the trenches, people will often think he’s a soldier, give him some equipment and send him off. It amazes Sami how the need for men is so dire that they don’t even question his presence, but he gets it pretty quickly.

It’s a war and people are desperate. Desperate for hope. Desperate for a victory. Desperate to go home. Desperate for the end, whatever that might be. In the midst of all this desperation, Sami’s not a person, but another mean of cutting the war short.

The worst is world war two. He’s fighting for the allies and it’s bizarre, fighting against his own country, but at the same time it’s not as if Sami could ever consider fighting for Hitler under the rule of Nazi Germany. 

The allies notice his accent, but they also notice the shade of his skin and his hair. They assume he escaped Germany before the war broke out and that he’s decided to join the right side of the fight. Sami doesn’t bother correcting any of them. It’s not as if they’re that wrong.

Sami’s regiment is small compared to some others. They’re two hundred starved, determined, desperate men and if you know more than twenty names, then you’re one of a few.

Sami doesn’t know how he meets Lukas Podolski, nor how they become friends. He thinks Lukas searched him, heard there was another German runaway in the squad and decided to search for him. It sounds like the kind of thing he’d do. What Sami does know is that he likes Lukas, despite trying his damn hardest not to. It’s harder when he jumps if he gets to know people. It’s harder to leave when he has things to leave behind.

Lukas was born in Poland, but he lived his entire life in Germany, right until the day Germany invaded Poland. That was the day his parents spent their life savings on safe transport for him to England. It was also the last day he saw his family.

Lukas doesn’t seem phased by this. He tells Sami about how and resourceful smart his folks are. How he has no doubt that they’ll find a way to make it out alive and unscathed. How he just knows he’ll see them again one day, the same way he knows they’ll win the war. Sami’s not sure if he’s lying to himself or if he genuinely believes it, and he doesn’t bother finding out. He’s already half right, so who says he isn’t telling the whole truth?

The third night after they meet, Lukas shows Sami the only photograph he managed to bring with him when he left Germany. It’s picture of him and his best friend with arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, grinning from ear to ear. Lukas’ best friend is blonde and probably blue-eyed if Sami were to guess from the black and white image. He’s tall and healthy looking. He’s fighting for the other side.

Lukas speaks about him like he’s the sun, the earth and the moon, all wrapped into one mortal human body. He tells Sami about intelligent he is, how he’s always been light on his feet and good in a fight. How he wanted to come with Lukas, but didn’t have the money, so instead he just gave it all to Lukas and told him to be safe. Sami isn’t one to assume things, but the way Lukas speaks doesn’t leave much room for doubt on the nature of their relationship.

Sami thinks about saying something, but what is there for him to say? ‘It’s okay’? They’re in the war. Everything is as far from okay as it could be, and having a German boyfriend is certainly no help. And when Lukas tells him, “I would like to see him. Talk to him again,” Sami wants to shake him until he can put some sense into his head.

“He’d kill you. He wouldn’t want to, but he’d have to,” Sami says. Lukas flinches at his words, but then he shakes his head.

“You don’t know him. He’s not like them.”

“I know the war,” Sami replies. I know our troops will soon have to pull back from Greece and that we might die in the process. I know most of these men won’t make it to the end of the war. I know we might be part of this group. “I know what’s it like to face someone on the other side of the field. Not seeing their face, but the color of their uniform. I know that we’re under orders to shoot first and ask questions later, and so are they.”

“He wouldn’t,” Lukas says, angry, spitting out the words and looking at Sami with such pure fear in his eyes, like Sami’s words are killing him.

Sami cringes, regretting everything he has just said. Who is he to crush someone’s hope, when hope is all people have left in a place like this. “Let’s hope for both our sakes that you’re right. I hope you meet him again, too, Lukas, but only after the war is over.”

“But by then they’ll have lost the war and he’ll be a war criminal,” Lukas says. 

“Then the two of you will run away together. Go to South America and start again,” Sami says.

He can’t believe he’s giving a man advice on how to run away with his nazi german boyfriend, on the impossible eventually of the both making out of the war alive and finding each other before anyone else finds them.

Sami knows he should be keeping his mouth shut, but it’s late and he’s tired. He’s been tired for days, weeks, months. He’s been tired for too long, but at least tonight he’ll be able to sleep in quiet. There’s no sound of artillery fire bursting across the sky, no Germans on their footsteps or explosions on their backs.

What tomorrow brings is a mystery. It always is. So instead Sami will trust what he knows, and he’ll help how he can. Maybe he’s not helping the world, but he’s helping a good person and that’s enough. It has to be.

By the time he meets Mesut, Sami’s spent two weeks in the ungrateful, treacherous frontlines and he’s craving the next jump more than he craves water, food or shelter. The British forces have evacuated from the Balkans, a miracle escape that almost saw their regiment dead in the water, but this has only pushed them to Crete, where they’ll die if they don’t leave soon. He hasn’t asked anyone about Mesut. He prefers to think Mesut is somewhere else miles away, safe and sound.

He’s not.

The people in Crete do not welcome the British forces with their arms wide open, which is fine. No one expected them to. War has been lingering at their doorstep for months now, and news have reached most of the island that Athens has been lost to the Axis. Nobody talks about whether or not the enemy forces will try to reach Crete as well. There’s no need to.

Sami spends most of his time on patrol with Lukas. They walk around the perimeter of the small town they’re camped by and stay on the lookout for the quiet Germans and the boisterous Italians. Lukas tries to talk to the townspeople a couple of times, but he knows little to no Greek and his English is pretty rough, so for the most part people tend to ignore him. Sami lets him do all the talking he wants as he keeps an eye on the horizon.

It’s during one of these failed attempts at socialization that they meet Mesut.

He’s younger this time, probably not even eighteen yet, and if Sami thought he’d seen stick-thin Mesut before, then that’s because he hadn’t seen him like this. The hollows of his cheekbones look as if they’ve been carved out by hand, his wrists so thin Sami could easily fit them in the space between his thumb and his pointer finger.

And yet, despite looking as if he couldn’t hold up against the slightest blow from the wind, Mesut is still full of energy. He actually engages Lukas back in a conversation that’s a weird mix of Greek, Italian, English and even some German.

“You are staying? For how long?” Mesut asks.

“We don’t know,” Sami replies as butts in the conversation. Lukas smiles at him like a proud mother, happy to see her son talk to the other children, but Sami misses it, too focused on Mesut to notice anything else.

“The Axis,” Mesut says the word carefully, but he still mispronounces it, like someone who’s only ever heard the name through bad radio connections, “they are coming, yes?” he asks.

Sami knows what he’s supposed to do here. He’s supposed to reply, “I don’t know,” again so as to avoid creating panic. Only that statement is a lie of the worst kind there is, because he does know what is going to happen.

He knows that the Germans will come in through the air and that the people of Crete will take to whatever arms they can find to defend their homes. He knows they’ll have the advantage during the first day, and that this will give people hope when it shouldn’t. He knows that the British army will eventually retreat before all their troops are lost. He knows that the people of Crete will be slaughtered as the Germans take control of the island.

He knows that if doesn’t do anything, Mesut will either die or become a forced worker for the Germans.

And this is why Sami says, “Yes, and we won’t be able to stop them. You must run away. Try to get on our ships if you can, anything to get off the island as soon as possible.”

“Hey, hey, what—” Lukas says, but Sami keeps going, pushing Lukas away. He needs to make sure Mesut understands him. He needs to save him. Just this once, he needs to do this, fuck the consequences.

“It doesn’t matter how you do it. Go get your family and get off this island, Mesut.”

Mesut stares at him, confusion written on his face, before something connects in his mind and his eyes turn steely with determination. Mesut nods and then turns around, running towards the village.

Sami turns towards Lukas, expecting the other man to reprimand him for his actions, but instead Lukas only grins at him.

“If anybody asks, we say we were drunk and didn’t know what we were saying.”

Sami thinks about it for a couple of seconds. “Okay.”

They walk in silence back to their campsite, side by side. It’s only when they’re reaching their tent that Lukas says, “I don’t know why you did that, but I don’t judge you for it. Everyone deserves a chance to run.”

Sami nods. He doesn’t need Lukas’ approval to feel better, but it’s good to know someone’s got his back.

That night, he won’t be able to sleep at all, will spend the whole time tossing and turning, wondering if he did the right thing. It doesn’t even cross his mind that he might have disturbed the fabric of the universe or any of that crap by warning Mesut because frankly, he doesn’t give a damn. What he wonders about is whether he should have gone with Mesut. If there was something else he could have done for him. If what he did was enough.

When the jump comes, it’s not enough to push Sami’s thoughts away from Mesut. Few things are.

* * *

Regardless of what year it is, Madrid is always a sight to see.

Sami’s seen the whole world by now, but few places are able to amaze him the way Madrid has never failed to. This is his first time visiting the city since his first jump, and he’s not disappointed to see the main things haven’t changed. Erupting from the desert as proof that anything can survive if you try hard enough, Madrid explodes with energy, lives in a specific kind of organized chaos. The city gives Sami a sense of inner peace few other places do.

To him, Madrid is quiet plazas and small restaurants, large crowds and overcrowded subway trains. It’s late nights spent exploring the city with teammates he’ll never forget and later, showing his old girlfriend around Salamanca. It’s schedules that still confuse him to this day and never ending days.

Madrid may no longer be his home, but that doesn’t mean Sami is any less fond of the city.

This, partly, explains why when Sami meets Mesut in 2054, in a tapas bar near the proud Bernábeu where the food is too expensive and the sangria blood red, Sami says ‘hello’.

He’s been in Madrid for over a month now and he knows the next jump is on its way towards him at full speed, so he decides he doesn’t care if Mesut thinks he’s weird and ignores him. Neither does he care if Mesut thinks he’s worthy of his time and they spend just one night together, which will drive Sami crazy afterwards, wishing they’d spent more time together. He’s going to say, “hello,” and he’s going to enjoy looking at Mesut, who seems to be out on a birthday dinner. He’s not going to listen to the little voice that calls itself ‘reason’ at all.

It’s possible that Sami may or not be ever so slightly drunk. He got a job as a dishwasher in a fancy restaurant nearby two weeks ago. Apparently some jobs never go out of date. The pay is shit, but it’s not as if he has to worry about his savings.

“Hello,” Mesut replies, with a quirk of his brow and an open smile, “can I help you?”

Sami flashes him his most charming smile and tries not to let his eyes travel Mesut’s body. He doesn’t want to be too obvious, but he’s always found it hard not to stare at Mesut, especially when he’s so close, leaning against the bar counter and looking so well.

“I’m Sami,” he says, giving out his hand for Mesut to shake. He already knows what Mesut is going to say next, but he still can’t keep his smile from widening when Mesut shakes his hand.

“Mesut Özil,” he says. He then looks at the counter, where the bartender has placed his drink, looks back at Sami, hesitates for a second where his mouth makes an indecisive ‘O’ before he asks, “Can I interest you in a drink?”

“I feel like I should be the one asking you that,” Sami laughs.

“Well maybe, but I’m not afraid of a little affirmative action,” Mesut says, grinning at Sami before he signals the bartender for another drink.

Sami likes that he didn’t need an answer to know what to do.

The bartender gives Sami a glass of sangria, which Mesut raises his eyebrow at, earning a shrug from Sami. “What can I say? I’ve been corrupted.”

Mesut grins at him. “You’re not from here?” he asks, pulling up the stool behind him so he can sit. Sami mimics his actions.

“Born and raised in Germany, moved here in my twenties and stayed for four years before I left. I’ve been travelling the world since, but now I’m back.”

“For how long?” Mesut asks after he takes a large sip of his drink.

Sami shrugs. “That is not for me to decide,” he says. Mesut takes that as the cue that it is and drops the subject, moving on to tell Sami about how his parents are from Turkey, but he’s lived in Spain for most of his life.

“What’s your favorite thing about the city?” Sami asks.

Mesut takes a while to answer, thinking it over with a look of pure concentration that Sami finds cuter than he should. “How lame would it be if I said the food?” he asks, which makes Sami burst with laughter. “I mean, there are other things I love. The people, the atmosphere, the architecture, but the food…”

“Is the best thing on earth?” Sami takes a large sip of his drink as he tries to control himself.

“It’s just _so_ good. It’s terrible, actually. I recently had to quit the gym because I got more hours at the kindergarten I work at and I’ve gained three kilos since. Three kilos! I’m going to become obese soon and will need my students to roll me into class every morning.”

“That is indeed a very serious problem to have,” Sami says as seriously as he can, earning himself a playful punch from Mesut, “maybe you can start exercising with your kids during gym class? They still have that right?”

Mesut rolls his eyes, thinking Sami’s question comes from him being out of touch with current times and not any times in general. “Yes, they still have that, but it’s another teacher who gives it. I teach them how to color inside the lines and how to behave like decent human beings.”

“And do you like it?” Sami asks. Mesut always has a different job, different background whenever he sees him, but him enjoying being around people seems a fixed constant.

“Yeah,” Mesut says with a soft smile. “The kids are great and it’s what I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember. I’m actually out on a dinner party tonight because it’s one of my colleagues’ birthday,” Mesut says, sneaking a glance at the table he’d been sitting at earlier.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to steal your attention from his friends,” Sami says.

He’s about to get off the stool, thinking this is his cue to leave, when Mesut stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “This is fine, seriously. They can handle themselves without me for a little while longer.”

Sami sits back. “If you say so.”

“I do. But what about you? What’s your favorite thing about Madrid?” Mesut asks.

“That’s easy. Real Madrid, obviously,” Sami replies, grinning cheekily like he couldn’t be prouder of himself even if he tried.

“You’re a Real fan, of course,” Mesut nods, looking as if the meaning of the universe has just dawned on him and everything makes sense now.

“You’re not?” Sami asks. He fakes being outraged by putting a hand on his chest and leaning back, which makes Mesut throw back his head from the force of his laughter.

“I am, but my heart belongs to a good _jamon ibérico_ and some _queso frito_. I’m weak, Sami.”

Sami smiles at the sound of Mesut saying his name. “Weak and getting fat,” he says.

This time it’s Mesut’s turn to fake outrage and Sami’s to laugh his heart out. One of Mesut’s colleagues calls him while Sami’s still laughing, telling him they’re leaving.

“I should get back to my table,” Mesut says after Sami’s laughter has died down. He’s grinning from ear to ear.

“Alright,” Sami’s smile fades. He doesn’t want the night to end like this, but of all the ways it could end, this is one of the best.

Sami’s expecting Mesut to get up and leave with a few goodbye words, so he’s a little surprised when all Mesut does after he gets up is turn towards Sami again.

“Aren’t you going to ask for my number? Since I already bought your drink and everything.”

“Is that how it is?” Sami asks, the right corner of his mouth tugging up.

“Why not?” Mesut replies.

And this part right here, this part is tricky, because Sami’s done this before. He made promises to other people that he couldn’t keep and he let himself hope for things he knew were impossible. He knows that the less time he spends with Mesut, the less it will hurt when he leaves. He knows he shouldn’t repeat his mistakes. He knows this, and yet—

“My cell phone is broken, but I have a night shift tomorrow, so maybe I could take you out for lunch? I’ll buy the drinks this time, you’ll get the cheese.”

“I can get behind that,” Mesut says, and that’s how he and Sami agree to go on a real date for the first time.

The next morning, Sami is surprised to find himself waking up where he went to bed, in a poor excuse for a loft that’s really just a small apartment with the living room, kitchen and bedroom all built in the same space. It’s above a Thai restaurant whose owners give him leftovers every other night. At the rate they’re going, Sami has enough stir fried rice to last him a lifetime of cold leftovers for breakfast.

He takes his time in the shower and goes out to the cheapest, but still decent looking clothing shop he can find so he can get another outfit to wear. It’s his first time owning more than two outfits simultaneously since his first jump. His choice are a dark blue polo and simple black jeans. They might not be cutting-edge fashion, but they are reusable.

“Don’t worry, you look fine,” the owner of the Thai restaurant, May, tells him after Sami spends five minutes checking his reflection on the restaurant’s window.

“Thank you,” Sami scratches the back of his head and looks away, embarrassed at being caught examining his own appearance. He feels like a teenager all over again, going on his first date with the pretty girl in his 9th-grade class.

“You should bring your date back here if they’re pretty. You can sit by the window and attract customers,” May tells him.

She takes clear delight in the way Sami stutters and says another, “thank you,” before rushing to the cable train, laughing all the way back into the restaurant.

Cars in Madrid have to pay a heavy tax to circulate the city’s confinements, which has led to their gradual substitution with cable trains that run above the city and more efficient subways. Sami spends the whole ride picking at his fingers and rolling his hands one over the other.

He’s not nervous. He has no reason to be nervous. He’ll probably be gone the next day and none of this will even matter. He’s just a little anxious.

He’s never gone on a date with Mesut before.

Since Mesut’s lunch break is only a little over an hour, they agreed to meet in front of Mesut’s kindergarten and then head out together to a good café nearby. Sami waits with his hands in his pockets, gaze moving through the people passing by him.

He’s about to check the name of the kindergarten for the fourth time to make sure he’s got the right place when someone sidles up next to him.

“So, are you the date?” a man with bright blonde hair and a know-it-all smirk asks. At Sami’s look of confusion, he adds, “Are you Mesut’s date?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m Sami,” he gives out his hand for the man to shake. 

“I’m Marco. Mesut’s friend, co-worker, yesterday’s birthday boy and the person who’s going to look out for Mesut’s kids while you two go eat delicious food together.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Sami tries to say before he’s interrupted. He can’t remember the last time he felt this awkward.

“Don’t apologize to him. He owns me,” Mesut says, stepping in front of Sami. He puts a hand on Sami’s stomach and gentle pushes him back. “How many times have I covered for you so you could go on a date with Mario the yoga instructor?”

“He’s just Mario now, thanks,” Marco hisses out, but from the way he’s grinning from ear to ear Sami would be reluctant to say he’s truly angry.

“He’ll always be Mario the yoga instructor. Accept it, live with it, put it on your wedding bands when you two get married,” Mesut says, winking at Marco before he turns around and gives Sami a brilliant smile. “Hello, nice to see you again.”

“Hello,” Sami says and manages to give Mesut a real smile back despite simultaneously wanting to dig himself a hole to hide in.

He’s not used to taking part in this kind of familiarities anymore, although he can’t deny that they’re heart-warming to see.

“You’re still gonna have to pass the Marco-approved interview later, Sami, but you’re good for now. You’re like, at least ten times hotter than the guys Mesut usually dates so you’ve got that going for you already.”

“Okay, yes, we’re definitely leaving,” Mesut wraps an arm around Sami’s waist and starts dragging them away, not giving Sami a chance to reply to Marco.

“Ten times hotter, huh?” Sami asks when they’re a good distance away and he’s sure Mesut’s friend can no longer hear them.

“Yes, well,” Mesut coughs and ducks his head, “yes,” he finishes. “I’m really sorry about Marco and his overall Marco-ness.”

“It’s fine,” Sami says, bumping his arm with Mesut’s. “It’s good to have friends who care.”

Mesut smiles at him. “Yeah. Do you have any annoying, overcaring friends I have to worry about?”

Sami doesn’t falter, not even for a second. “No, not anymore and not here. I’m more of a lone wolf, I guess.”

“You don’t look like one, if you don’t mind me saying,” Mesut says as he looks him over.

“I wasn’t always, but things change and I guess with them, people too,” Sami shrugs.

Mesut’s arm bumps into his, but this time it stays right next to Sami’s. The back of Mesut’s hand grazes the back of Sami’s until Sami gets the hint and takes Mesut’s hand.

“Come on, let’s go eat unhealthy food and then whine about getting fat,” Mesut says, making Sami laugh.

If there’s anything weird about their date, it’s how comfortable it is. How effortless it is to talk about his life with Mesut, to discuss how great Real Madrid is and the merits of seafood paella over the chicken kind. Sami pretends he knows about the politics in this day and age and he listens to Mesut tell him about his family with a smile on his face. 

He pays for the drinks. Mesut pays for the food. They agree to switch on the next date.

Sami knows he’s being an idiot, but he wants this and he’s so tired of saying no to himself. What’s the point in to save himself from further pain when pain has been a constant for so long now? He might as well enjoy this while he can. 

Something amazing happens the next day, when Sami wakes up in his T0 apartment, right where he went to sleep. And then that same amazing thing keeps happening, day after day, until Sami reaches the two-month mark in the same place for the first time.

Sami still goes to bed in a mix of excitement and fear every night. Hope is starting to bloom in his chest that maybe this is it. He’s gone the full circle and Madrid is his first and last stop.

He’s never wanted to believe something so badly.

He and Mesut have been dating for a whole month now, and it’s been one of the best months of his life. They meet every day, sometimes for lunch, sometimes for dinner and a couple of times for very late night takeout in Mesut’s apartment. They’ve gone on double dates with Marco and Mario the yoga instructor. Mesut hasn’t introduced him to his family yet, but he’s talked about it.

It’s all going so fast. Sami’s in a giant roller coaster ride, so immense that he can’t see where he’s going. He wants to believe there’s an end, a moment when everything will slow down again and he’ll get off the ride, quietly and happily, but experience tells him the rollercoaster is broken. It tells him that he’s headed towards the tallest drop now, that he’s going to have to climb the largest piece of the track and that right at the very top, where the track should drop, there will be nothing and Sami will fall.

Experience tells him the ride was doomed from the start, but hope—hope tells him he won’t know unless he tries.

They continue to date. Two months turns into three months. Mesut’s youngest sister, who lives in Barcelona, visits them on a weekend and they arrange plans for her entire stay.

They haven’t had sex yet. It’s stupid, Sami knows sex is just a physical thing and that what he has with Mesut is so much bigger than that. It’s just that, despite knowing this, sex still feels like the last meters of the climb, the moment before the big drop.

Then they hit the fourth month mark and Mesut tells him, “Sami, I really like you and I totally respect that you want to take this slowly, but I swear if we don’t have sex soon I’m literally going to die and Marco’s going to write ‘died of sexual frustration’ on my gravestone and what will my family say of that,” and Sami figures okay. Okay. Change of plans.

This time, Sami’s not afraid to take his time. He strips himself first, smiling when he notices the way Mesut’s staring at him as if he’s the first ray of sunlight after a month of darkness. He takes Mesut’s clothes off for him, trailing his hands down Mesut’s chest, which has been gaining definition ever since he and Sami decided to take up jogging. When they’re both naked, Mesut throws himself backwards on the bed. He lies there with his knees spread open, a look of raw want reflected in his eyes.

Sami lies down on top of Mesut’s lithe body and kisses him until Mesut is pushing against him, hands scrambling for purchase against Sami’s shoulders. Sami pushes him back against the bed before he starts trailing kisses and gentle bites all the way down Mesut’s body. He marks his hipbones and collarbones and the space right beneath his right ear. 

“Sami please,” Mesut begs. His voice is set on a lower tone than usual, breathless and desperate. One of Mesut’s hands grabs the back of Sami’s head. His fingers slide against Sami’s hair as he pushes Sami’s head down, down where he wants it to be. Sami moves with him, but when it comes to actually setting the pace, he’s the one in charge.

He drives Mesut insane, until Mesut’s voice fills the air around them with broken moans and reverent prayers. Sami looks at his face the whole time, watches the way he tries to suffocate the sounds by biting down on his bottom lip and bunches the sheets underneath his fists.

“Can I fuck you?” Sami asks after Mesut comes down his throat.

“Yeah, yeah,” Mesut says, spreading his legs wider open and moving to turn around before Sami’s hands on his hips stop him.

“I want to see you,” Sami says.

Mesut swallows. His pupils are blown to hell and back and there’s a delicious flush running from his cheeks all the way down to his chest. “Okay.”

Sami puts a pillow at the bottom of Mesut’s back so it’s lifted from the bed. He opens Mesut slowly, one finger at a time as he kisses him until they’re both running out of oxygen. By the time Sami decides Mesut is ready, Mesut is already hard again and moaning against his mouth, somehow louder than before.

One of Sami’s hands rests against the curve of Mesut’s neck where it meets his shoulder. His thumb presses against the bone, rubbing harsh lines against the soft skin. His other hand goes to Mesut’s hip, lifting it up so he can get Mesut closer. Mesut’s legs rest on Sami’s shoulders, where they keep sliding off as Sami fucks him.

The rest of the world disappears, evaporates into nothing, dissolves into heat and white noise and Mesut. The only sounds that can be heard in the room are their bodies joining and their heavy breathing. At one point, Mesut reaches down and starts stroking himself, which is when Sami lets go of their slow, tortuous pace and finishes them both off. 

“That was,” Mesut says afterwards, when they’re both lying side by side, Mesut on his back and Sami on his stomach, “that was wow.”

Sami chuckles. “Agreed.”

Mesut turns around and kisses him, a simple peck on the lips. Sami grabs his hips and pulls them flush together, running his fingers through Mesut’s hair. Mesut falls asleep first, while Sami stays up watching the hours pass on the holographic clock on Mesut’s wall.

Five months go by, then six. Sami’s promoted to cook in the restaurant he works. Around the seventh month mark, Mesut asks him to move in with him. Sami says yes. A few days later, Sami finds a guy who knows another guy who can get him fake papers in exchange for pretty much all the money he has. Sami says yes to that, too.

They spend the holidays in December together with Mesut’s family in Valencia, where Mesut’s parents live. None of them celebrate Christmas, but apparently any excuse to throw a big banquet and exchange a gift or two is a good one in Mesut’s family. It’s one of Sami’s happiest memories.

The fear of one day waking up in a different places never goes away, but neither does Sami so in a way, things are even.

They go camping during the Easter break. It’s been a year since Sami’s last jump.

The weather is still cold and crispy, but the ground is dry as a wick and there’s not a cloud in sight. They travel for three hours to get to their camping site, a remote park in the middle of the park Barranco del Río Dulce. Mesut insisted they picked a park where they could still all the stars at night, and who was Sami to refuse him.

They leave on a Friday, after they’ve had dinner. As expected, they find the park to be deserted when they arrive, the usual vacation goers not there yet. Mesut still says they need to find a spot far away from everyone with a waggle of his eyebrows, which makes Sami laugh and say, “you could at least pretend it’s so we don’t have to deal with annoying neighbors.”

“Yeah, well,” Mesut says, shrugging his shoulders.

Their tent sets itself up, one of the many wonders of modern technology. In less than five minutes they’ve got their mattress laid down, self-heated and loaned from Mario who apparently is a camping junkie, much to Marco’s dismay. Their sleeping bags are just regular, boring sleeping bags, since neither can afford any of the expensive stuff. They give them an excuse to cuddle at night, though, so who are they to complain.

“What should we eat? The chips or the marshmallows?” Mesut asks as he goes through their food bag.

“We should only eat the marshmallows if we light a fire,” Sami says. He pulls up his shirt and discards it, trading it for something softer.

Mesut turns around with wide eyes, looking at Sami as if Sami’s the second coming. “It’s past midnight, Mesut.”

“But marshmallows.”

“And we’re both really tired. You almost fell asleep while putting on your pyjama.”

“Yes, but marshmallows.”

“And—” Mesut interrupts him by putting a finger on Sami’s lips and a hand on his shoulder.

“Sami, this is me, you, a remote camping site and some marshmallows cooked in a fire we’re talking about. It’s gonna happen.”

Sami rolls his eyes. “Fine, get the fire mat then.”

Mesut cheers, throwing his hands in the air before wrapping them around Sami’s neck and pulling him in for a kiss. They get lost in one another, a usual occurrence, pulling away reluctantly after a couple of minutes. One of Mesut’s hands is already up Sami’s shirt and one of Sami’s down Mesut’s pants.

“Later,” Mesut says, leaning his forehead against Sami and grinning before he scoots backwards.

Sami sets up the fire mat, another loan from Mario, while Mesut gets a couple of wooden sticks for them to stick the marshmallows into. Sami finds the contrast interesting, seeing an artificial fire created by an electrical mat that has more technology in it than Sami’s phone did before the jumps and some dirty sticks together. 

Mesut bets Sami that he can eat more marshmallows than him, so they both eat until they feel sick, proving that, at the end of the day, they’re both idiotic children at heart.

At a little after one in the morning, the single lamp post in their area turns off, so that the only sources of light left are their fire and the lamp inside their tent.

“Hey, look at that,” Mesut says. His head is thrown back, mouth hanging open as he stares at the sky above him. Sami follows Mesut’s line of sight to see the starry sky, set in perfect darkness with a thousand shimmering dots of light. He’s seen many similar to it before, but never one like this.

“One second,” Sami says before he goes to their tent and pulls out one of the sleeping bags, spreading it open on the ground outside afterwards so he and Mesut can lie on it. 

“Do you think we can see any planets from here?” Mesut asks. His head is resting on Sami’s shoulders, body a little off in a diagonal line.

“I think I have an application on my phone for that,” Sami says, digging out his phone from his pocket. Mesut leans in so they can check the screen together, their foreheads bumping against one another.

“Oh, we can see Mars. That’s so cool,” Mesut says, pointing at a small dot on the sky that looks just like all the other dots on the sky.

“You could go up there one day,” Sami says, unable to resist the temptation to use his knowledge of other Mesuts. 

“What? Me? I’m just a kindergarten teacher.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t do it. You could be just about anything. One of the first men to lead an exploration of Mars, a gold miner or the ruler of a nation. You have the talent for it.”

“Alright,” Mesut says, staring at Sami as if he’s gone mad. He doesn’t look like he believes a word of what Sami’s saying, but of course he plays along. “Then what about you? What would you be?”

“I would just be me and I’d be by your side,” Sami shrugs, which makes Mesut’s head slide off his shoulder.

“And live off the great success of my other selves? That sounds like a pretty good life.”

Sami shakes his head and purses his lips. “This is better. I’d trade any of that for this, a thousand times over.”

Mesut rolls his body and moves so that he’s on his knees on top of Sami, hands on the ground by Sami’s head. “You’d trade all of those other lives to be with a kindergarten teacher?” he asks, genuinely curious.

“No, I’d trade all of those to be with you,” Sami says, because he doesn’t have the time to be dishonest.

Mesut smiles at him, this warm delighted grin that tells Sami he doesn’t really believe him, not yet. Mesut never believes him when Sami’s struck by one of his bouts of honesty, but he doesn’t deny them anymore either. Sami thinks Mesut is changing, finally beginning to accept Sami’s words for what they are: the simple truth.

Sami would trade it all; the stars, the cosmos and the ineffable. He’d trade them a thousand times over, for this little piece of home.

They sleep outside that night, watching the stars, side by side.

The second Christmas they spend together is in Mesut’s apartment in Madrid. This means setting up an air mattress on the floor of their bedroom for Mesut’s sisters and another in the living room for his parents. Mesut’s brother has to sleep on their poor excuse for a couch and he gets excused from dish washing duty for his troubles.

It’s not an ideal situation, but Sami doesn’t mind it too much. Mesut’s family prefers to spend their time exploring the city instead of staying cooped up inside, so it’s not as if they’re around that much. For most of the week, Mesut and Sami divide their time showing them around.

“How’s Valencia this time of year?” he asks Mesut’s mother while Mustafa inspects the window of a holograms shop.

“Cold, humid and very bright,” she grins at him. “How’s Madrid?”

“Also cold, not humid and also very bright,” Sami grins back. He’s always liked Mesut’s mother. Mesut seems to take after in many ways, from the gentle way he talks to his sense of humor.

“I heard it’s going to snow this year. Imagine that, snow in Madrid.”

Sami shrugs. “It’s 2055. Anything can happen.”

“How philosophical of you,” she replies, as she loops their arms together. “Now come on, go buy this old woman a cup of hot chocolate and we can discuss yours and Mesut’s plans for adoption.“

Sami chokes in his saliva as he stares at her in horror.

He can’t have kids. He doesn’t know if he’s going to stay here and he can’t become someone’s father just to leave and Mesut is still only twenty-five and they can’t. They just can’t.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding! Oh, you should have seen your face. You looked like you’d swollen a bull’s testicle by accident.”

“That was _not_ funny,” Sami says when he feels like he can talk again.

“That was hilarious,” Mesut’s mother replies. 

Sami’s still feeling a little faint, and with reason, when he gets home and finds Mesut and his youngest sister trying to cook the turkey Sami had bought the previous day. This is quite worrisome since Sami has it in good knowledge that Mesut is terrible in the kitchen and can start a fire at the blink of an eye, and as far as he’s aware Mesut’s sister is even worse.

Must be genetic, Sami thinks, eyeing Mesut’s mother suspiciously before he steps inside the fire-hazard zone. “Alright, have you guys burned anything down yet?”

“Sami please,” Mesut says, rolling his eyes at him. At that exact moment, one of the pans on the stove bursts into flames and turns whatever was cooking on it into a pile of ashes. Sami has to rush him to stop the fire, grabbing the pan and shoving it underneath the sink before spraying it with the Reduce-Fire can.

“You were saying?” Sami asks as he raises a single, judgmental eyebrow.

“That was Nese!” Mesut points an accusatory finger at his sister, who lifts both of her palms in a placating gesture.

“Mesut’s right. I’m terrible at this, but now that Sami’s here you two can cook while I go do some last minute shopping. Thank you, bye!” she says, and like a force of nature in her own right, she is gone before either of them can voice a word in complaint.

“We totally just got tricked by a twenty-two-year-old with a shopping addiction, didn’t we?” Sami asks.

“Yupe,” Mesut replies, “now tell me, do you want to stuff the turkey or skin the potatoes?”

Sami takes a look at the kitchen while he weighs his options. “I’ll stuff the turkey if you clean up when we’re done.”

“Fine, but you need to help me with the dishes after dinner.”

“Can’t we trick one of your siblings into doing that?”

Mesut grins at him. “We can try.”

They cook side by side while Mesut’s phone plays music to fill the silence. Sami’s not paying the music any mind. He’s too busy figuring out how he’s going to put a bag full of grounded chestnuts into their turkey. Mesut, however, is dancing alongside the melodies that come on, feet moving across the kitchen in a soft beat until it gets to a song that’s been on the radio for days now and he murmurs, “Oh, I love this one.”

He continues to skin the potatoes by the sink, but now he’s singing alongside the music, whispering the lyrics almost like he’s not even aware he’s doing it.

“ _When your legs don't work like they used to before and I can't sweep you off of your feet, will your mouth still remember the taste of my love? Will your eyes still smile from your cheeks?_ ” At this point Mesut puts down the potato peeler and turns towards Sami, grinning as he says the next lyrics, “ _Darling, I will be loving you 'til we're seventy and, baby, my heart could still fall as hard at twenty-three.”_

Sami laughs, at the ridiculous love declaration and at the way Mesut seems to think he’s actually good at dancing. Despite this, he still blushes when the words keep pouring out of Mesut’s mouth and when Mesut pulls him in so they can dance together, the blind leading the blind.

“We’re terrible at this,” Sami says after Mesut tries to spin him and almost sends their turkey spiralling through the air.

In reply, Mesut continues to sing alongside the lyrics, this time louder than before. “ _I'm thinking about how people fall in love in mysterious ways. Maybe it's all part of a plan. Well, I'll just keep on making the same mistakes, hoping that you'll understand._ ”

The reason why Sami doesn’t sing along for the rest of the song is because he, unlike some other people, still has some of his pride and dignity and not because he doesn’t know the lyrics. Absolutely.

They stay in the kitchen, dancing and cooking together until the rest of Mesut’s family comes home and they eat dinner together in Mesut’s cramped living room. 

Afterwards, they trade presents between themselves. They’re meant to be small gifts, a way of showing appreciation for everyone else, but of course everyone goes all out anyway.

Mesut gets Sami a pair of Adidas football shoes. After everything that happened, Sami could never return to playing professionally, but a game or two every other weekend with their neighbourhood's amateur team didn’t sound too bad. He had no idea Mesut knew he wanted to play again, though. He’d only mentioned it once or twice in passing.

Sami gives Mesut a new leather jacket since his old one is one gust of wind away of turning into scrap fabric. The way Mesut smiles at him when he opens the package makes up for all the long hours at work that Sami had to undertake to afford it.

They got together to buy gifts for Mesut’s family, which is the same as saying Mesut dragged him around Madrid while Sami tried, and failed, to be useful in the art of picking the perfect gift under a teacher and cooks’ budget. 

In January, they spend a freezing night stuck in Marco’s apartment when a wave of snow hits Madrid by storm and forces the city into a standstill. They divide their time between playing cards, interrogating Marco about his haircut and asking when the wedding with Mario is.

In February, Mesut decides they should go fishing and they get lost in the woods together.

In March, Sami goes to bed with Mesut wrapped around him like an octopus and wakes up alone, in the middle of different city, a hundred years in the future. Sami’s unspoken question on whether or not the jumps had ended has finally been answered.

Sami spends an hour walking without aim. He’s in shock, wanting to bash his head against the wall until he wakes up from this horrible nightmare. His heart is trying to climb out of his ribcage, pushing and pulling and forcing and he can’t breathe, he can’t get any air into his lungs or think or focus and he can’t do anything, he just can’t.

Sami falls to his knees. Someone next to him stops and asks him if he’s alright, but their voice is white noise in Sami’s ears.

He’s hyperventilating, is what he is, and he’s gone. His life is gone. Mesut is gone. It’s all gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everyone enjoyed this chapter! It was certainly my favorite to write so far. Also, for the purpose of this fic, let's all pretend Ed Sheeran was born in 2030 and he only released the song 'Thinking Out Loud' in 2055, cool?


	4. Chapter 4

Sami walks. Experience tells him that the best thing to do after he wakes up from jump is to get moving and blend in with the crowd. Sami hasn’t done this in a while, but some things you don’t forget.

His feet start moving of their own accord, pushing him onto the streets with no specified direction in mind. He doesn’t try to find what city he’s in or the exact year, doesn’t look around or stare at the people passing by. It doesn’t matter. This is not Madrid and the year is not 2055. This not his home. This is not where he should be.

For the first time since the jumps started, Sami feels the true weight of exhaustion on his shoulders. His whole body aches in a melancholic way, begging for a respite it hasn’t gotten in years. He is tired to the very core, worn through and beaten. He thought he’d gotten used to the jumps and how brutal they were. Blind faith and hope that one day they would end had to keep going, the need to survive forcing him to live through the impossible. He thought that was the only thing he could do, his own words playing on loop inside his head like a politician’s speech:

We move forward.

But then he had returned to Madrid, returned to something close to his natural element and for the first time in too long, he had a home. He had his name on the lease and a potted cactus on the windowsill and plans to buy a dog. He had a life.

Sami’s feet find the beach of their own accord. He spends the day there, staring at the sea. At least some things never change.

And with each passing minute, Sami’s resolve grows steadier.

He needs to do something. He can’t go on like this, not knowing where he’ll wake up the next day or if this will ever end. He needs answers and more importantly, he needs to go back to Mesut. If he jumped to that time once, he sure as hell can do it again.

If Sami can’t find his answers, well, he’ll decide how to cross that bridge when he comes to it.

After he leaves the beach, Sami has to steal some clothes and food. He hates doing it, but walking around in his pyjamas isn’t the smartest choice and his stomach has been growling at him for hours. 

He goes to a library, where he spends the next days going through their entire science collection. There are a lot of terms and concepts he doesn’t understand. Time riffs and wormholes and discontinuations in the fabric of space. Sami goes through the texts like a starved man searching for a last meal. He takes notes and looks up names. He doesn’t feel any closer to getting back to Mesut, but he feels closer to _something_.

Each passing night finds him in the same space, a small corner behind an ice cream shop near the beach. The wind bites against his heels every night and the salt seeps into his clothes until he has to switch them for new ones. Living in the streets again is rough, mentally and physically debilitating, but Sami doesn’t hate it. He doesn’t have the energy to spare on hate.

Sami spends twenty-seven days at the library until eventually he calls it quits. He’s read up on all he can with his limited knowledge. Everything he finds is a whole load of ‘what’ and not a lot of ‘how’ and Sami doesn’t know enough about astrophysics to make sense of any of it. 

He finds the Mesut in this world through a quick search on the Internet, the temptation too big to resist. He’s thirty-eight and living in Paris, where he runs a charity organization for children born with physical deficiencies. He’s happily married with two kids. Sami smiles at the computer screen. 

After his search through the library, he decides to take a different approach to the problem.

He’s tried the science method and gotten absolutely nowhere, so maybe it’s time now to try the supernatural method. Sami doubts it will get him anywhere, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

The first four fortune tellers he visits tell him a whole lot of nothing and take all of his money. Sami tells them about the jumps anyway. It feels good to let it all out. They don’t believe him, but they at least manage to look sympathetic and as pathetic as it may sound, Sami takes some comfort in their words. It’s better than nothing.

To pay for their services, Sami finds a job at the docks. He rents a cheap apartment with one of the other dock workers while he’s at it. He has a feeling he’s not going to jump anytime soon. His days are divided between work, finding the next fortune teller to rip him off and thinking about Mesut.

Four months go by. He hasn’t lost hope that he’ll return to Mesut yet. He can’t.

The rain season starts. That’s what people call Spring nowadays. Rain season, because that’s what it is. Day after day, twenty-four hours after twenty-four hours after twenty-four hours. A never ending cycle of rain. 

Sami learns a new meaning of wet and visits his fifth fortune teller, who tells him he needs to start eating asparagus with every meal if he wants to find the solution to his problems. Sami thanks him for his help and leaves halfway through his one hour ‘connection with the soul of the universe’ session. His sixth fortune teller consult is through the internet with two more people. Sami tells all of them about the jumps. 

He’s not sure what he’s waiting for, if it’s someone who will believe him or someone who can help. He’s not even sure if there’s anything to wait for.

Six months go by. The rain season turns into the hail season. Sami moves apartments to the center of Luanda. He messages a leading scientist in physics and trades various messages with him until he stops getting replies. He punches a wall and breaks his index finger. Six months turn to seven.

He wonders if Mesut still misses him.

The twelfth fortune teller he visits is a man named John Cho. He calls himself the ‘Unraveler of Supernatural Mysteries’ and Sami’s not sure what he’s expecting when he first sees him, but it sure isn’t an American man of of Chinese descent wearing a business suit and offering him a cup of tea.

“I know, I know. I don’t look very much like an ‘Unraveler of Supernatural Mysteries’, do I?” he asks Sami as he leads them to his living room.

Sami coughs and pretends that isn’t what he’s been thinking for the past three minutes. “You don’t really look like the usual fortune tellers I visit, no,” he admits.

“I’m probably nothing like those either. I have a degree in Business from a university here in Luanda and I lived in the USA for most of my life with my Chinese grandmother, who is the reason why I’m here right now. _She_ was the real unraveler of supernatural mysteries, taught me everything I know. When she died, I thought I should take up the family mantle, help others the way she did.”

“She sounds like a special person,” Sami says. He has no idea what’s going on.

“She was. But anyway, what’s causing your pain? Money? Love life? Health?” John asks. He’s turned off the white lights in the living room and turned on two purple ones near the corner. It gives the room a slight supernatural look, diminished by the hand painted portrait of two kitties near the window and the floral mantle over the table they’re sat at.

“I’ve been jumping through time,” Sami says, straight to the matter.

This is the part where people start asking him about how he’s been sleeping and if he has any other health problems. John just smiles, slow, and says, “Okay. Tell me everything.”

Sami does, from start to finish, until his mouth his dry and his hands are closed in two fists and pain blooms across his chest like a bitter flower. It always hurts to bring the memories to the forefront of his mind and lay them out clinically in front of someone else.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” John asks when Sami’s done.

Sami nods. He wonders if this man will try to get him medical help. He looks like the type who’d take the right type of action in this kind of situation.

“I think I know what’s happening to you.”

“I’m not crazy,” Sami says. The response is instinctual. He knows what he sounds like when he tells his story.

“And I’m not just some guy trying to rip you off.”

John gets up and turns on the white lights, dissolving the already barely existent magical aura. He picks up a sheet of paper and a pencil and sits down in front of Sami again.

“Alright, so I know this is going to sound kind of complicated at first, but stay with me, okay?”

“Okay.”

John nods, pleased with Sami’s reply. “This is our universe,” he draws a large circle that reaches the edges of the paper, “and this is you,” he adds as he draws a tiny stick figure with long hair and a beard, “and this is a crack in the fabric of the universe,” he says as he draws a ragged line through the circle.

He looks up at Sami, expecting him to give an answer of some kind. Sami nods. “Okay,” he says.

"Okay, so basically, our universe has a bunch of cracks,” John adds more cracks to the circle, “They’re usually pretty tiny, which means only small objects can go through them. The one you fell through is an exception," John draws over the line near Sami until it’s pure black.

"Now, as far as I know, you can’t fall through a crack on purpose. It happens by accident, _but_ it always needs a little push. It’s bit like a one-in-a-million type of thing,” John stops to think. “Billion. It’s bit like a one-in-a-billion type of thing that needs a push to happen. Were you doing anything supernatural-ish the day before you fell?" he asks, as casually as a dentist would ask, ‘have you been brushing your teeth lately?’

Sami stares at him like he’s mad. "No, nothing. I was just laying by the pool."

“What about your mental state? Grandma always said people’s inner thoughts were like a catalyst, a center,” he draws a circle in the air with both his hands to illustrate his point.

"I was thinking about the weather and Madrid," Sami recalls, trying to cast back his memory. It wasn’t easy. The Madrid he knew was a distant dream now. "It was during pre-season. I was wondering if I should stay in Madrid or move somewhere else."

"That could have been it. Just a thought is all you need sometimes. A small push and there you go," John drew an arrow connecting stick-figure Sami to the crack.

"But what about that time I showed up in 2010 and it was like I no longer existed? Did the ‘crack’ erase me?” Sami draws finger quotes in the air. “And what about Mesut? How is he always there?"

"Ah, well, as for the time thing, that’s easy," John turns the paper around and starts drawing very thin ovals on top of one another. "You know that theory about how every time you have two options and you take one, another universe is created where you take the other option?" John doesn’t wait for Sami to reply. "Reality is like that. The big things, the wars and the epidemics, those always happen. Some things just can’t be changed. It’s the small choices, the ‘should I take my car or the bus to work this morning’ choices that create a divergence. It’s all kind of poetic if you think about it. Billions of worlds exist where almost everything is the same, except you got coffee instead of tea in the morning and your neighbour didn’t die in a car crash because they run out of gas five minutes earlier than they would have in a universe where they _didn’t_ go for a late night donut run.”

“Alright,” Sami says.

“The point is, there are thousands of different universes out there and they’re all connected," John starts drawing more thin ovals, this time vertically so that they cross the others in a square pattern, "so when you jump you’re going through all of them. Get it?"

Sami doesn’t, but it kind of makes sense if you squint and forget all logical thought. “Kind of.”

"And as for your friend Mesut, I have no idea. These things don’t always have a reason,” John throws his hands in the air and gets up, heads towards the kitchen on the room connecting to the living room.

Sami gets up to follow him.

"And that’s that. You can explain all this, but you can’t explain how Mesut is everywhere," Sami snaps at him. He’s vaguely aware that he’s acting like an ungrateful asshole, and even less aware that he’s in shock.

Despite giving him a sympathetic look, John still shrugs. “Maybe he’s some kind of God, maybe he’s in a situation like yours, maybe… maybe he’s your soulmate and you were always meant to be together, but for some reason, you never met in your original world and this is the universe’s shitty way of fixing it. I don’t know. I do know he’s your focal point. Your anchor. Why him, though, and not some other person or a place or a time, I really don’t know, but maybe you can figure it out.”

"Okay," Sami says. "Okay," he repeats, more to himself than to John. "And to get back to him? What do I do?"

John shrugs again before he hands Sami a cup of coffee.

“You got here by thinking you wanted to move somewhere else and the universe messing up. I figure your biggest chance of going back is through thinking again. Concentrate your energies, focus your aura,” John starts making circles around his head with his left hand, “be your thoughts. You’re in the crack right now, push yourself away from it.”

“And it’s that easy? Just think really hard about it and boom, I’ll go back to where I was, as if that's not what I have been doing that for the last few months.”

“Stay there as well, I would imagine. End the cycle once and for all,” he says. Sami takes a deep breath, closing his eyes before he opens them again.

“But I’ve been doing that this whole time. I’ve been thinking and hoping and — ”

“It’s different now. You said it yourself, you stayed for two years when usually you only stayed for one month, tops. I think the universe is trying to remedy itself and fix what’s wrong. You’ve been thinking ‘how do I get back’, it’s time to think ‘I want to go back’. Guide your energy in the right direction.”

Sami stares at John. “How do you even know all this?” he finally asks after a couple of seconds of staring. His mind is reeling from too much information all at the same time and he needs something else to focus on.

“I told you. Grandma used to be really into all this universe stuff and she passed it on to me. Now, can I interest you in some peanut butter cookies? I know it may not be the right time, but you really look like you need to sit down again and eat something and I’ve got a fresh batch in the oven.”

“Sure,” Sami sits down at the kitchen table. “Why not?”

They eat the cookies in silence, until Sami feels compelled to break the silence.

“How did your grandma know all this?” he asks.

John shrugs. “She said she had an ‘eye for the universe’. I thought she was making it all up to trick me, but eventually people started showing up with stories similar to yours. Some had lost things, others had been lost themselves. You’re the first person I know to be stuck jumping over and over again, but I guess anything could happen.”

Sami takes a large bite out of his cookie. Makes sense that more people would have met the same unlucky fate as him. “You know, you're the first person to believe in me,” he says.

“I know that feeling,” John says. “Hey, do you need a place to stay? Until the next jump or whatever? Because I could help you out.”

“No, I’m good,” Sami shakes his head. “You’ve already helped enough.”

“Alright,” John replies. He still looks like he wants to do more for Sami, but doesn’t know how. He doesn’t accept any money when Sami tries to pay him, says, “Use it to take care of yourself.”

When Sami’s at the doorstep, he decides to voice the thought that’s been plaguing him for the past thirty minutes. “You said there’s a chance of me getting back to Mesut in the year 2055, right? But you can’t guarantee it. You can’t guarantee that I won’t end up where I came from or at the end of time or just, anywhere.”

“I can’t,” John grimaces. “I don’t think you will though, I think you’ll end up in the right place. These things have a way of fixing themselves.”

Sami snorts. After countless jumps, he can excused for not having the same faith as John.

“Alright,” Sami says.

And then he leaves and he walks, and he walks, and he walks.

* * *

Sami prays. He wishes. He hopes. 

He focuses all his thoughts and energies and feels like an absolute clown down doing so, but he does it anyway. He’d do just about anything to go back. He doesn’t know where he’ll end up, but he has to try. 

There’s nothing else for him to do but try.

When he wakes up, there’s a flickering red light to his left on top of a doorway and a path of light to his right leading to a crowded street. On the inside of both of his elbows, there are two identical bruises in a circular shape.

A cable train rushes past above the city’s skyline. In the coffee shop near the alley where he woke up, a song plays.

_When your legs don't work like they used to before_  
 _And I can't sweep you off of your feet_  
Will your mouth still remember the taste of my love?  
Will your eyes still smile from your cheeks?  
Darling, I will be loving you 'till we're seventy  
and, baby, my heart could still fall as hard at twenty-three.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, please excuse the science aspect of this fic. To say it is rough and inaccurate is an understatement to say the least.
> 
> Second, a huge thanks to Frauke, Marina and Fabi, who are all great friends and even greater people. 
> 
> This fic was very fun to write, and if I had the time and patience I would add another 10k to it and expand it even further, but alas, this is it for me. Thank you so much for reading. As always, comments and reviews are greatly appreciated! x


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